UPDATED: Chamber President Donna Meyer remembered for energy, positive approach

St. Mary Parish lost one of its most vocal and high-energy boosters late Sunday, when St. Mary Chamber President Donna Meyers died.

Meyer, who led the parish’s Chamber for 17 years as president, died at 11:59 p.m. Sunday at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

No immediate word was available about funeral arrangements.

Meyer is being remembered by the people she worked with for her up-beat attitude and involvement in a wide variety of community projects.

The greatest tribute to Meyer may be the trepidation with which Chamber leaders are approaching the search for her successor.

Former Chamber Board of Directors Chairman Jason Watson, president of Patterson State Bank, talked about the difficulty in finding someone with Meyers’ can-do spirit as well as her ability to manage an office.

From current Chairman Raymond Price: “I don’t even want to think about finding her replacement."

Price credited Meyer with turning a nearly broke Chamber into one of the best Chambers in the state.

“She brought it to the status it has now,” Price said. “She took it to the next level and beyond.”

Much of the work of keeping the Chamber moving during 19 months of the COVID-19 epidemic fell to Meyer, the Chamber officials said. And for the last year, she was undergoing treatment for cancer as well. Meyer formally resigned the Thursday before she died.

Meyer was instrumental in developing a range of Chamber programs that have become familiar names in St. Mary: the Bayou BBQ Bash, which the Chamber started and turned over to members of the Marine Corps League; Chambers of Health, an effort to raise the overall level of health in St. Mary; Bikers on the Bayou, initiated to celebrate the 50th anniversary of “Easy Rider” and which continues as a yearly event; and Leadership St. Mary, which introduces up-and-coming business leaders to the parish’s political and economic institutions.

“I believe [Leadership St. Mary] is the best program I was ever involved with,” said Jo Anne Bergeron, a retired banker and former Chamber chairwoman.

Meyer’s death is a “huge loss,” Bergeron said. “With the COVID and all, she had been taking care of everything.
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“She was just full of energy, always positive. She always felt that we’re going to get done what needs to be done.

“She was a wonderful person. I loved Donna.”

“She was really an optimistic and positive person,” Watson said. “She was always looking for opportunities to improve St. Mary Parish.”

“She was a great asset to the parish and a great asset to the community,” Price said.

Price said the Chamber board will begin the work of seeking a new president next week.