A bearded centennial

On March 16, 1858, Act Number 97 of the Louisiana Legislature was approved by the Speaker of the House of Representatives William W. Pugh and the Lieutenant Governor and President of the Senate Charles Homere Mouton. It was signed, as well, by Governor Robert C. Wickliffe.
This Act enacted “that the inhabitants of Ville Platte, in the parish of St. Landry, be and they are hereby created and made a body corporate, under the name and style of Ville Platte, the said corporate limits to be one square mile, having a point in the middle of the actual public road leading from Opelousas to Alexandria, opposite to Marcel Daire’s store as its centre.”
The newly incorporated area had been previously founded by Marcellin Garand, who was Adjudant Major of the French Empire under Napoleon Bonaparte.
A hundred years after the town’s incorporation, a centennial event was held in 1958 that was in conjunction with that year’s Louisiana Cotton Festival.
Jackie LeBas, who was one of the queens’ chaperones that year, called the centennial “a very large affair.” She explained that the Lion’s Club and Lion’s Auxiliary were very involved in the event.
One of the Lion’s Club members involved was Dr. Jerry Veillon, who described the centennial as being terrific. “We had our group from the Lion’s Club, and we traveled around the area to publicize the centennial,” he explained. “We went to Alexandria, to Bunkie, to Mamou, and to a few other places. We had a lot of fun doing it.”
Throughout the course of the celebration, Dr. Veillon and other men from the city grew beards. These men were known as “Les Braves Barbes.”
Dr. Veillon explained that this fashion trend was “because all the men grew beards a hundred years before that.” He added that during the centennial “some of the men had full beards, some had mustaches and goatees, and some just had mutton chops or long sideburns.”
Also having a beard for the centennial was Leonard Glynn Fontenot, who is a descendant of Garand. Fontenot explained that his beard caused some problems to occur not long after he married Mary Alice Aucoin who didn’t like beards. She pointed out that she still does not.
“I went to summer camp that summer for ROTC to get my commission, and I was burnt black,” said Leonard. “Mary and I went to Mexico for a little while that summer, and everybody would come up to me and speak Spanish. Mary would say, ‘Look at that. They think I’m married to a Mexican.’”
He continued, “Then right before school started is when I realized I had to go for interviews for a job because it was my senior year at LSU, so I had to shave my beard off. But, I had gone from a beard to just having mutton chops.”
There were celebrations all throughout the week, but the centennial celebration was centered primarily around the coronation of Queen Cotton.
LeBas said, “Queen Cotton that year was from Lafayette, and her name was Janice Hebert. We had a lot of contestants for queen, and we had a lot of visiting queens. We stayed at the Ville Platte High School home economics cottage. They came into town on that Saturday morning, and they left on Sunday night.”
“We hauled cots from the Boy Scouts Camp, and we had the band room and the home economics cottage full of beds,” she continued. “And, we only had two bathrooms. The girls did very well with two bathrooms. I guess they didn’t wear as much makeup as they do now.”
As LeBas explained, there were no complaints about the sleeping arrangements. “The parents were very cooperative and didn’t fuss about where the girls were staying,” she said. “We had clean sheets and all of that, but it wasn’t any palatial hotel. We even fed them some of their meals in the home economics cottage.”
One of the visiting queens was the Tournoi Queen Susan Dupre LaHaye. LaHaye said, “It was wonderful. I was at LSU at the time, and my mother (Dulcie) loved all of that. She had borrowed a beautiful Palomino horse that belonged to Audley Vidrine, and she found me a gorgeous green velvet long dress.”
That Saturday’s events, according to LeBas began with a noon banquet at the Evangeline Club. “Then we left and went by school bus to and from our points of destination,” said LeBas. “They came back to Ville Platte High, and then we had to rehearse in the gym and get ready to go to the coronation.”
King Cotton that year was deLesseps “Chep” Morrison, who was Mayor of New Orleans. “‘Chep’ Morrison was running for governor or was getting ready to run for governor,” said LeBas. “That’s why he was selected. He and my dad (Harvey) were good friends and were mayors together. He was Mayor of New Orleans, but he was really from New Roads. He was a country boy, but he married a city girl.”
LeBas recalled one memorable incident from the coronation that involved her brother Bernard. She said, “Bernard was still a little boy, and he and other Boy Scouts helped seat the crowd in the old Ville Platte High gym for the coronation and activities there on Saturday night. Bernard knew his mom and dad and I were there, and he thought he was a big shot. But, he wasn’t. He was the shortest one.”
She continued, “Mrs. ‘Chep’ Morrison came in to be seated in a special place. Bernard said that she didn’t have on enough clothes, so she had to go sit with the common folk in the back of the gym because he wouldn’t let her sit where she should have. She was very flamboyant and was probably wearing a sleeveless evening dress or something. Bernard never saw his mom or me walking around like that.”
Later during the coronation is when, as LeBas said, Garand’s sword and picture were presented to the City of Ville Platte. “Micky Reed’s great-great-great-something was Garand,” explained LeBas. “He and Bernard had to hold the sword the picture and let Mr. Roland Reed present it to the city. They still have that picture in city hall.”
LeBas also explained that there wasn’t any trouble with the queens during the coronation except “one girl didn’t come back with the group. That next summer she eloped with the boy she had dated that night of the coronation. She dated Dr. Arthur Vidrine’s son. His name was Arthur Junior.”
The rest of the group returned to their accommodations at Ville Platte High. “I don’t guess we slept much that night,” expressed LeBas. “We came in after midnight, and they ate and undressed and talked and talked and talked. Then we got them up early in the morning on Sunday and had breakfast for them. We had a big coffee pot, some fruit juice, and things from Mr. Stelly’s bakery for them to eat.”
Later that Sunday morning was the mass at Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic Church that preceded the parade. “The parade was at 1:00 p.m., so we had little time after mass to get the queens ready and all dressed,” said LeBas. “Some of the mothers came in to help, too, but there was no room for them to move because we were in the little classrooms. We never heard anybody or any parent or any girl that participated complain.”
During the parade, every queen rode on a float except Queen Cotton because, according to LeBas, “she rode in a carriage that was supposedly Garand’s carriage. But, it was an old buggy that had been fixed up.”
Also riding in the parade were Leonard Glynn and Mary Alice Fontenot. Leonard, as descendant of Garand, rode on a float while wearing a military hat and his ROTC coat. His wife, along with Bonnie Sue Guillory, played the Evangeline Maid calliope in the parade.
The Sunday’s events ended with the running of the Tournoi. LeBas commented, “A lot of the queens and their parents wanted to go because they had never heard of such a thing. Those poor Tournoi riders were the last ones in the parade with their horses, and the horses were almost dead when they got to run in the Tournoi.”
LaHaye recalled a “very interesting experience” about that year’s Tournoi. “I was the first queen to ride in the Tournoi,” she stated. “The horse (that my mother borrowed) had run in the Tournoi for many years, and they said it was a safe horse. We saddled it up, and I practiced on the afternoons when I got in from LSU. I got on the horse on the day of the Tournoi and was comfortable. When the horse heard the trumpet, it took off and ran like he had not run the time before. I hung on though, and I still got the last ring.”
The centennial was a special event for the city’s residents because it only comes around every hundred years. For Leonard, the centennial seemed to be a big deal. He concluded, “When you’re in college and struggling to get through and you’re just married, things can only be so big. But, (the centennial) was big enough for me to grow a beard.”