Jim Bradshaw: Two longtime La. newsmen pass from the scene

The deaths of Richard D’Aquin and Pete Piazza in the same week unleashed a flood of memories about old newspapering days, and brought a sense of loss. Another, more personal, one touched me in a different way.
D’Aquin was my boss for 30 years. As publisher of the Lafayette Advertiser, he became a legend in the Thomson Newspapers organization for his devotion to the bottom line.
For years The Advertiser was the biggest per capita money maker in one of the biggest newspaper chains in the world — and that included the parent newspaper, the London Times. A fellow that worked at the North American headquarters in Chicago once told me, “The accountants cross themselves and genuflect when he visits.”
We had some momentous arguments when, as editor, I pushed for more news space and he, sharp pencil in hand, refused to budge one iota from a strict news-to-advertising ratio. I remember particularly a Monday when we were about to send the first men to the moon. Monday papers were almost always the smallest of the week and there was no way to fit all the news into one.
“This is huge news,” I argued, “bigger than Columbus finding the New World.”
It didn’t sway him.
“If Columbus wanted a big news play,” he responded, “he wouldn’t land on a Monday.”
His unflinching financial stewardship came not because he was a penny-pincher, but from a sense of duty that characterized all of his life. Thomson appointed him to run the newspaper as a business, and he saw it as his duty to do just that. He also did his duty in Korea, where he fought as one of the Army’s youngest-ever commissioned officers. He saw it as his duty to work to better his community and contributed time and money to many causes. He also thought it a duty to stand by friends through thick and thin.
I was one of those, and he did.
Pete and I shared hundreds of assignments over 20 years and together produced Our Acadiana. We drove more than 5,000 miles together working on that book, down every back road we could find, sometimes looking for something specific, sometimes just to see what we would see.
He was a consummate professional with an unfailing eye for the picture that captured an event or topic. He climbed towers in winter winds, hiked up tall bridges on hot summer days, did what needed to be done to get the picture right.
I still laugh about an event that showed his devotion to getting the picture. We were driving in his truck on Highway 14 between Abbeville and Delcambre on a stormy summer day. I looked out across a field and saw a tornado coming out of a cloud.
“Pete,” I said, “that’s a tornado,” thinking he would want to drive away from it.
“It sure is,” he said, turning into the field, grabbing a camera, and running toward it.
He came running back just a few seconds later. “Hang on,” he said. “That thing’s going to my Momma’s house.”
At one point, as we sped down the highway, I noticed that he had one arm out the window, shooting with an automated camera he was holding on the truck roof. He was dialing his mother on his cell with the other hand, and was steering the truck with his knees. I thought I might die that day, but not from the tornado.
We somehow made it down a rural road to the house and came to a skidding stop on her gravel driveway. But Pete, camera in hand, began running away from the house, not toward it.
He hollered to me as he ran, “Go throw Momma in the bathtub. I’ve got a great shot from the fence line.”
Luckily, that wasn’t necessary. The tornado lifted with little damage to anyone. Pete got a great shot.
Other memories: He made a mouth-watering spaghetti sauce. He was regularly honored as the community’s leading blood donor. Even his dogs reflected his devotion to photography. They were named Nikon and Leica.
Those deaths bring a sense of loss. There was no obituary for the third one, but it added immeasurably to a sad week.
Nellie was a little black cat who fit in the palm of my hand when we found her in the back yard. She was blind in one eye, her neck was twisted at a strange angle, a snaggle tooth poked above her lower lip. I didn’t think she would last a week. I was wrong. She greeted me each morning for 21 years.
From force of habit, I took out her food dish this morning. She set priorities, insisting that each day should begin with her getting fed, then I could start the coffee. Those things stay with you.
You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.