Former Judge Simon reflects on career, writing

By CASEY COLLIER
First female judge in the 16th Judicial District, Anne Simon spoke Tuesday of the marriage of her judgeship and her writing career at the weekly Franklin Rotary meeting at the Forest Restaurant.
Born in the eastern United States, educated at Wellesley College, Yale University and Louisiana State University Law Shool, Simon moved to south Louisiana 50 years ago.
Now 15 years retired, she travels, visits with family, takes walks with her dog and writes novels based on her experiences in Acadiana, and on the bench.
Simon has written three novels, and is working on a fourth.
The first three all have the same dedication: “Dedicated to everyone who works in the American system of justice—a flawed system, but the best as yet devised by man.”
Her first novel was Blood in the Cane Field. The second and third, were: Blood in the Lake and Blood of the Believers. All of which, are available on Amazon.com.
“I was a general jurisdiction trial court judge,” said Simon, “which means, I handled everything from broken refrigerators to first-degree murder, and I had more than my share of capital first-degree murder cases. I don’t know why, but I did.
“Each day, whether it was the broken refrigerator case, or the first-degree murder case, I watched the human condition in a parade before me. I saw the tragic condition—one mistake and a life ruined. I saw the comical—a witness caught red-handed, spinning a complicated lie. I saw the weird—a citizen of his own sovereign state, persuaded he could roam the free sea of Lake Martin irrespective of wildlife regulations. And I saw the disgusting—a 15 year old truant girl found in the apartment of a 50 year old man, sat before me, displaying the wares she had peddled. That girl spelled for me, the name that her mother had given her: But’ty. Did she have any chance?
“All the time that I worked, I had a secret. I would go home at night and write-up some of these things that I had seen—descriptions of the people and descriptions of the area; and I kept three files: One file was labeled, ‘St. Mary,’ one file was labeled, ‘St. Martin’ and one file was labeled, ‘Iberia.’”
Simon explained that she didn’t do anything with the nightly notes contained in the three files while she was a judge, for two reasons. The first reason, she said was, “It is not ethically permissible for a judge to promote anything for money… as if I would decide a case differently because somebody bought a twenty dollar paperback.”
The second reason, she said was that she didn’t know how to put together a novel. “I got books from the library, and I read them,” Simon said, “the little nerd that I am, you know, had to read how to do it. And I had a set of CDs. There’s one on the Great Courses that tells you how to write fiction. But still, the projects never got off the ground.”
Then, one day, Simon had a conversation with her daughter-in-law, who teaches writing. She invited Simon to join her writing group, and it was there that Simon decided to write her first crime fiction novel.
Simon said of being invited to join the group, “Sometimes I think she did that for cover, to criticize me. But anyway, I was grateful, because they did (criticize) and they were merciless, and that’s what it takes. Not too many people want to tell me what to do. That’s the problem with being a judge; people don’t want to rub you the wrong way. But, that group was merciless, as I said, and I learned so much.”
Simon went on to discuss her yet-to-be titled novel, its status toward completion and the difficulties concerning its compilation.
“I’m trying to write something now about the year 1839, in this area, particularly New Iberia, though Franklin does figure into it very much because that’s the stop of the steamship before it reached New Iberia.
“That year, F. H. De Perriere obtained a charter for Newtown, which became New Iberia. His story is dramatic. His parents were murdered by slaves in a rebellion in Saint-Domingue, in Haiti, and he, as a small child, was taken out.”
That was also the year there was a regular route of steamboats that went out of New Orleans, up the Teche and passed by Franklin, but stopped at New Iberia, because beyond New Iberia, “the Teche was full of scags and trash and what have you,” Simon said. “The people in New Iberia stole a lot of the cargo that had come through Franklin, and that was the cattle for Lafayette, and whatever.”
“In 1839 also, a slave of the De Perriere’s, named Felicitae, nursed during the Yellow Fever epidemic, and she nursed very successfully using old folk medicine from Haiti,” Simon explained. “Her ways were successful and she became beloved, and when she died, it is said that the town shut down to walk in her funeral procession from St. Peter’s to the cemetery. Unfortunately, when I started on this, I didn’t know that I had kicked an ant pile. There are about 300 descendants of the De Perrieres, and they all have their own story, their own folk-lore, and they don’t agree.”
But then, she said, “A blow came to me about three weeks ago: One of them opened a Facebook page to gather all these stories. So, now there are going to be even more stories that don’t agree. I don’t know what I am going to do with this thing. But, I may have an idea. I think I may have a way around that. That’s what I’m going to do for the next year.”
Simon closed by saying that since she can’t be a senior in college again, studying history, she intends to write historical fiction, if she can ever get the De Perrieres to settle on one story that they can live with.
“So, that’s my post-career career,” Simon said. “Does anybody have any questions?”