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NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A global search for a Vietnam Veteran nicknamed “Louisiana” came to a bittersweet end recently.
A group of veterans who had started searching for their Army buddy in May with only a nickname and a single photograph to go by learned “Louisiana,” whose actual name was Harold Thomas, died from a heart attack in 2015 at age 65.
Susan Waldrop Garvin, the wife of Vietnam veteran Jim Garvin, said everyone just assumed Thomas was a good ol’ Cajun boy.
The Garvins spent most of the first weekend in June catching up with Thomas’ family, who lives in California where he grew up.
“We had to know, why the nickname ‘Louisiana?” said Waldrop Garvin.
It turns out, Thomas never lived in Louisiana, and in fact had never actually visited the state.
Thomas grew up in South Carolina before moving to Oklahoma and, finally, to California when he was 7. Even though he lived in the Golden State for the next 57 years, Thomas never lost his southern drawl.
“He called everyone ‘y’all,’ so they started calling him Louisiana,” Waldrop Garvin said.
And, when he enlisted, Thomas just told everyone to call him Louisiana.
It had been close to 50 years since they’d spoken, and all Jim Garvin had to remember his friend was a faded photograph of him from their days in Vietnam. Wondering why “Louisiana” had never gone to any of the reunions, Garvin hoped to connect with him and to say “Welcome home,” Waldrop Garvin said, so she posted on Facebook.
One of Jim Garvin’s veteran friends reached out and said he had kept a book of names of soldiers from their time in Vietnam. Under each man’s name was a hometown, but the name Harold Thomas never jumped out before because San Jose, California, was listed beneath it, and the group of friends had just always assumed their buddy was actually from Louisiana.
“He was hiding in plain sight this whole time,” said Waldrop Garvin. A volunteer researcher took the list and ended up connecting Thomas’ photo to his name.
Even though the reunion with Thomas won’t happen, being able to share stories and talk to his family about the outpouring of support from strangers around the world has brought a good finale to the search, she said.
“It’s as close to a perfect ending as we’d hope,” she said.

HOUMA (AP) — Crawfish were what’s for dinner in Louisiana long before the Cajuns, often associated with the savory crustacean, arrived in the mid-1700s.
The Houma Indians are mentioned in French documents as early as 1682, and the new settlers said the native tribe used a red crawfish as its symbol.
“The name translates literally as ‘red’ and is apparently a shortened form of saktci-homma, the name of the chakchiuma, meaning ‘red crawfish,’ “ according to a history of the Houma Indians compiled by a genealogy program called the Native Heritage Project.
The Houmas used the crawfish as a war emblem because of the crustacean’s habit of raising its claws when threatened instead of backing down, the groups says.
Several other histories say the Native Americans and later the Cajuns, who arrived after being exiled from Nova Scotia, harvested and ate crawfish in large part out of necessity. Most were poor, and crawfish were readily available in the muddy marshes and river basins of south Louisiana.
“In the 1800s, Cajun settlers modified lobster recipes passed down from their coastal Canadian forefathers, substituting them with crawfish,” the Louisiana Office of Tourism says.
“Creole restaurateurs in New Orleans caught on, and once it took off in the Big Easy, the secret was out: Crawfish became synonymous with Louisiana cooking. Today, Louisiana leads the nation in crawfish production.”
In the 1980s, the agency says, technological advances allowed producers to ship crawfish safely around the country, transforming them from a regional to a national dish. In 1983, the Legislature named it the state crustacean.
Chef Patrick Mould, owner of Louisiana Culinary Enterprises and a Cajun cuisine ambassador, told the Tourism Office the state is still the best place to enjoy crawfish, especially during peak harvest season from late February through May.
“If you want to suck some crawfish heads and peel some crawfish tails, the only place to do it is in Louisiana,” the agency quotes him as saying.
You’ll hear a similar take from Chef Randy Cheramie, a Golden Meadow native, former restaurant owner and current instructor at Nicholls State University’s cooking school.
“In the restaurant business, we only buy Louisiana’s tails because anything outside of the state doesn’t measure up,” Cheramie said last week in an interview with The Courier and Daily Comet.
“We are so lucky to have the seafood resources that we have here,” Cheramie said.
“It can be said that Louisiana seafood is the best one in the world coming from all the little ecosystems and estuaries for fresh seafood we have around here.”
Imported crawfish need to be washed and frozen, he said. The water takes away most of the fat, and the meat loses its tenderness once thawed.
“All the fat is in the head of the crawfish,” he said. “Fat equals flavor.”
There is no single right way to boil crawfish; everybody does it differently, he said.
Some people boil them for a short time then let them sit and finish cooking. Others boil them longer.
His family would usually toss onions and butter into the boiling pot. The onions would melt until they became like marmalade, releasing sugar. Once all crawfish were added, the family would add more butter, green onions and parsley.
“That how it was made in my family,” Cheramie said. “It’s nice we do a crawfish boil for no reason, just because we want to eat and have a good time at the same time.”

A utility vessel in Amelia sustained damage to its living quarters after it caught fire Saturday on Lake Palourde Road. No one was injured in the fire, Amelia Fire Chief Jason Brown said.

Amelia volunteer firefighters responded to a call at 11:55 a.m. Saturday of a boat fire in the 2900 block of Lake Palourde Road.

Upon arrival, there was smoke coming from a type of utility vessel, Amelia Fire Chief Jason Brown said. Workers had sealed doors of the vessel to try to smother the fire, Brown said. Firefighters from the Morgan City, Berwick, Bayou Vista and Patterson fire departments also responded for mutual aid.

Firefighters cleared the scene by 4:46 p.m. Saturday. The cause of the fire is undetermined, Brown said. Damage from the fire was confined to the living quarters area with minor smoke damage to the other decks, the chief said.

One or two rooms of the living quarters had significant damage, but the damage to the vessel wasn’t a total loss, he said.

Dr. Joshua Caffery is the new director of the Center for Louisiana Studies at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
Caffery, a published folklorist, poet and Grammy-nominated musician and producer will begin his new position on July 1. He succeeds Dr. Michael Martin, the center’s director since 2011.
“I’m thrilled to be joining an incredibly talented team at the Center for Louisiana Studies,” Caffery said. “It will be an honor to build on Michael’s work, and to engage with the center’s cultural mission at a time when the importance of our area’s cultural resources is so poignantly clear.”
A native of the St. Mary Parish community of Irish Bend, outside Franklin, Caffery earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in English and folklore from UL Lafayette. He completed a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and religious studies at LSU in Baton Rouge.
Caffery held the Alan Lomax Fellowship in Folklife Studies at the Library of Congress in 2013.
Lomax was a noted ethnomusicologist. The Cajun and Creole music he documented in Great Depression-era Louisiana was explored in Caffery’s “Traditional Music in Coastal Louisiana: The 1934 Lomax Collection.”
The book, which LSU Press published in 2013, inspired a four-CD box set produced by Caffery and musician Joel Savoy, “I Wanna Sing Right: Rediscovering Lomax in the Evangeline Country.” It was nominated in the Best Regional Roots Music Album category at the 2017 Grammy Awards.
The compilation also earned Caffery and Savoy recognition closer to home. The Community Foundation of Acadiana named the pair among the inaugural recipients of its Icon Arts and Cultural Awards in 2017.
The Grammy nomination for the Lomax box set was Caffery’s second. He played mandolin, and electric and acoustic guitars on Feufollet’s “En Couleurs.” The album also featured “À Saint-Martin,” a song Caffery wrote. It earned a song of the year nomination from the Cajun French Music Association.
“En Couleurs” received a 2010 Grammy nomination in the Best Zydeco or Cajun Music Album category.
In addition, Caffery was a founding member of the Red Stick Ramblers, a Cajun and Western swing band.
He taught in UL Lafayette’s Department of English while pursuing his doctorate. He was also chair of the English Department at the Episcopal School of Acadiana in Cade; a visiting assistant professor of folklore at Indiana University, Bloomington; and a brand strategist and researcher at Stuller Inc. in Lafayette.
Caffery is a published poet. LSU Press released his “In the Creole Twilight: Poems and Songs from Louisiana Folklore,” a collection of poems inspired by Louisiana myth, legend and oral history, in 2015.
“Josh brings a unique combination of talents to this position,” said Dr. Jordan Kellman, dean of the College of Liberal Arts, which oversees the Center for Louisiana Studies.
“His musical experience, folklore training, literary production and corporate experience make him ideally suited to lead the center, and to help it maintain and expand its reputation as the premier organization dedicated to the stewardship of the state’s culture and heritage.”
Founded in 1973, the center includes the Archive of Cajun and Creole Folklore, a repository of field recordings, oral histories, photographs and other materials.
The center also administers the University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press.
Martin will return to the University’s Department of History, Geography and Philosophy, where he is a professor of history.
Kellman called Martin’s leadership of the center “transformative.”
“Over the past seven years, the center has raised its public profile, increased its programming, and diversified and deepened its research portfolio. Michael also helped build the quality and reputation of the UL Lafayette Press, which won numerous awards under his direction.”