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Celina Marie LaCoste, a longtime resident of Patterson, was called to her heavenly home on Sunday, October 1, 2023 at the young age of 95.

A dedicated and hardworking mother, Celina’s life revolved around her eight children. She lovingly raised them, took care of them, and worried over their safety. Even as adults, she was always concerned that they were home and safe. Her children recall her being an excellent cook, her meals having kept them nourished and healthy. She was also a devoted Catholic, saying the rosary every day sometimes twice. Celina’s favorite hobby was spending time in the casinos and though she absolutely loved flying in airplanes, her children take solace in the fact that she is finally soaring once more.

Celina leaves to cherish her beautiful memory her eight loving children, Alice Davis and her husband, Butch, Sandra Thompson, Grayland LaCoste and his wife, Kathleen, Elizabeth LaCoste, Geralyn Stephens, Peter LaCoste and his wife, Linda, Lisa LaCoste, and Elaine Trahan and her husband Eric; and numerous grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren.

She was preceded in death by her husband, Peter LaCoste; her parents, George and Eauphimie Rose Babin; three sons-in-law, Robert Thompson, Ned Stephens, and Leon Lipari; two grandsons, George J. LaCoste and Tonylee Mire; a granddaughter, Celina Lipari; and sisters, Inez Webre and Ethel Lee.

The family requested that a time of visitation and remembrance be observed on Wednesday, October 4, 2023 from 9am until time of services at Sacred Heart Catholic Church. A Mass of Christian Burial was held for Celina on Wednesday, October 4, 2023 at 11am at Sacred Heart Catholic Church with Celina being laid to rest in the Morgan City Cemetery following services.

The Review/Diane Miller Fears
Bayou Vista Volunteer Fire Department held an open house Saturday at its La. 182 station. Patrons were treated to food, refreshments, games and a variety of demonstrations, which included fire safety. Firefighters presented an extrication demonstration and visitors to the open house look on.

Until this year, rural communities in Louisiana had limited options for improving sidewalks. Thanks to recent changes in Louisiana’s Transportation Alternatives Program, Franklin has received more than $500,000 to improve local pedestrian infrastructure.
 The Transportation Alternatives Program (TAP) is a federally funded program administered through the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development (DOTD) that focuses on creating “complete streets,” which address the needs of all road users, including pedestrians, bicyclists, motorists, and people with disabilities. This includes building safe, accessible sidewalks that connect residents to everyday destinations like schools, grocery stores, parks, and libraries.
 In a state with one of the highest rates of pedestrian fatalities in the nation, this investment will help make transportation safer for residents traveling without a motor vehicle. Franklin will use TAP funding for projects including improved connectivity of sidewalk network and sidewalk wheelchair accessibility.
 “Living in a rural community normally we are precluded from being able to afford the local match dollars required for projects such as the Transportation Alternative Program.  Thanks to our State partners and LADOTD for the guidance through this program which made it attainable to our underserved community,” said Mayor Foulcard of the City of Franklin.
 Before 2023, all communities regardless of size that received TAP funding had to contribute a 20% cash match in addition to covering Design and Construction Engineering and Inspection (CEI) costs, which average an additional 20% of project costs. This means that in the past, a $500,000 sidewalk project would cost $200,000, no matter the population of the town.
 “With new flexibility allowed in the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), our LSU AgCenter Healthy Communities team and I worked with the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development (DOTD) to make TAP a feasible funding option for rural communities,” said Jessica Stroope, LSU AgCenter physical activity specialist. “As a result, DOTD lowered the required construction match from 20% to 10% for communities 5,000-49,999 residents and will no longer charge Design and CEI costs to communities under 50,000 residents. This means that a $500,000 sidewalk project will now cost mid-sized towns closer to $50,000.”
 Brian Nunes, who oversees TAP in Louisiana, made sure that the new flexibility in the law translated into real change for Louisiana communities.
 “Before we made changes to the match requirements to TAP, rural communities rarely applied. The program was out of reach, and the funds were unspent. Louisiana is now using all federal funding designated for rural communities for the TAP program. The new flexibility in IIJA has allowed us to address previous equity issues and to reach our rural, distressed, low-income, and transit dependent communities.”
 In October 2022, representatives from Franklin attended LSU AgCenter Healthy Communities’ Rural Complete Streets Summit. The summit matched communities with mentors, including rotations with program leaders at DOTD, to help rural communities understand and navigate the funding application process. All communities who attended the summit and submitted a TAP application received funding.
Barring any unforeseen delays, work will likely begin in the next six to twelve months. Keep your eyes peeled and walking shoes ready for improvements in 2024. For more information about LSU AgCenter’s St. Mary Parish Healthy Communities projects, please contact Jessica Randazzo at JRandazzo@agcenter.lsu.edu
 
 
 

A scary accident in October 1945 is at least partially responsible for the establishment of Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center in Lafayette.

Bishop Jules Jeanmard, Monsignor A. F. Isenberg, chancellor of the Diocese of Lafayette, and Father Clifton Gaudin, vice chancellor, were on their way back to Lafayette after attending the 25th anniversary celebration for the St. Augustine Seminary in Bay St, Louis, Mississippi. They were about a mile west of the town of Livingston — midway between Baton Rouge and the Louisiana-Mississippi line — when their car slammed into the back of a truck loaded with cucumbers.

State troopers reported that the truck did not have its rear lights turned on. Gaudin, who was driving, said he was also blinded by the lights of an approaching car.

Gaudin suffered only minor bruises, but the bishop and Isenberg were taken to Our Lady of the Lake Hospital in Baton Rouge. Newspapers reported the day after the accident that the bishop was “resting well,” suffering mostly from shock and bruises, and that Isenberg had a fractured hip and possible skull concussion.           

Their injuries required them to spend a few days at Our Lady of the Lake and during that stay Bishop Jeanmard became acquainted with the Franciscan nuns who staffed it.  

The order was well established in Louisiana by then. The first six Franciscan sisters came from France in 1911 to open a hospital in Pineville.  For some reason, that didn’t work out, but the nuns stayed and opened St. Francis Sanitarium in Monroe in 1913, then Our Lady of the Lake in Baton Rouge in 1921. That history of work in Louisiana prompted the bishop to invite the order to open a hospital in Lafayette in 1949, but it appears that the nuns were reluctant to make the move.            

Isenberg, who well remembered the care he received at Our Lady of the Lake, was the one who finally persuaded them to come to Lafayette. His persuasion was powerfully helped by a generous donation from the Jewish businessman and philanthropist Maurice Heymann to fund much of the construction.
(Heymann, incidentally, was an ecumenical donor. In the 1950s, he offered land for a hospital in his new Oil Center to the Louisiana Baptist Convention. They declined the offer and the land then went to Lafayette General.)

Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, led by Sister Marie Brendan Donegan, opened its doors as a 50-bed hospital on St. Landry Street, not far from St. John Cathedral, on Aug. 1, 1949, It, like other Franciscan hospitals, has been growing since — so much so that Sister Barbara Arceneaux, a former provincial of the order said in 2011, on the 100th anniversary of their arrival in Louisiana, “They call us ‘Our Lady of the Perpetual Construction.’”

Although said tongue-in-cheek, it’s an apt nickname. In 1958 a four-story addition doubled the hospital’s capacity to 110 beds. Another  four-story addition in 1972 brought the capacity to 255 beds. Then, in July 2011, an entirely new, 300-plus bed, hospital was opened on Ambassador Caffery Parkway, and all but a few offices were relocated from the old St. Landry Street campus, The hospital’s website described that project as the largest construction project in the city’s history.

 A Catholic hospital would probably have been built in Lafayette even if the Franciscan nuns had decided not to do it. There were several orders of hospital nuns working in the state in the 1940s, including the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, who had been at St. Patrick’s Hospital in Lake Charles since 1908.

But it is interesting to speculate how the medical history of south Louisiana might have been changed if the tail lights had been working on that cucumber truck that night in October 1945.

You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.