The Lion's Roundtable (Guests: Honor Student Project, Part II)
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Damon Sunde:The views and opinions expressed in the following program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of KSLU, the SLU Department of Athletics, Southeastern Louisiana University, or any other entities represented. Portions of today's programming are reproduced by means of electrical transcriptions or tape recordings.
Todd Delaney:Discussing topics of interest to the university, Hammond, and the surrounding communities, this is the Lion's Roundtable. Now here's your host, Doctor. Amber Nero.
Dr. Amber Narro:Good day. This is Amber Narro on ninety point nine FM, The Lion. I am here with my class today on part two of our 1983, Flood Legacy Series, I guess we'll call it. Right? Welcome.
Dr. Amber Narro:I'm so glad to have you. I've got our business group here. These are students who are majoring in business and are gonna talk to us a little bit about the economy of the area and how it sort of changed and the things that they were able to find out during their interviews. But first, I'm gonna let them introduce themselves to you, tell you where they're from so you can kinda place these folks in in their understanding of the 1983 flood that impacted Tangipahoa Parish so hard. Welcome.
Dr. Amber Narro:Hi. Gracie.
Gracie McGee:My name is Gracie McGee, and I'm from Ponchatoula.
Dr. Amber Narro:Oh, the land of where it happened.
Ben Byrd:My name is Ben Byrd, and I'm from Livingston.
Dr. Amber Narro:Awesome.
Kevin Chavarria:My name is Kevin Chavarria. I'm from Covington. Excellent.
Matthew Lewis:My name is Matthew Lewis, and I'm from Denham Springs.
Dr. Amber Narro:Good to have you.
Cameron Alexander:My name is Cameron Alexander, and I'm from New Orleans.
Dr. Amber Narro:Wonderful. So all people who have been from areas that have been affected by storms and and things, you're local folks for the most part. Right? Gracie, did you know anything about this storm before you started? Or this flood, I should say?
Dr. Amber Narro:Because really I mean, it was it was rain. Right? But it ended up a flood. So talk to us.
Gracie McGee:Yes, ma'am. Particularly. I my family moved to the area from Mississippi about twenty years ago. Okay. So we're more familiar with what happened with the twenty sixteen floods and then during Ida.
Gracie McGee:My birthday is also during hurricane season, so we had some conflict there. The nineteen eighty three flood, we know a lot of people that experienced it just from being Ponchatula community members.
Dr. Amber Narro:Heard about this before?
Gracie McGee:Yeah. Okay. Just my family specifically didn't experience it, but I know the area did.
Dr. Amber Narro:Look. I've lived in Ponchatula for twenty six years now or so. I had hurt I I knew about a flood that had happened some time ago. Right? But I didn't really know about the nineteen eighty three flood until I started seeing it in the news when the settlements started coming to fruition and when things started happening.
Dr. Amber Narro:Judge Jeff Johnson and I know each other in the community, and he he contacted me and said, you gotta write these stories for these for these people. These people have to be understood. What happened here has to be understood so that, hopefully, it doesn't it it something of this magnitude doesn't take so long to take care of, in the future. We talked on yesterday's show about, that families didn't have flood insurance and they didn't have, FEMA to come to the rescue. Maybe not big groups of people who are coming in with big trucks with water and things like that because we have the power of social media to help with our, with people's knowledge of impact and things that are going on.
Dr. Amber Narro:So people around the world will start sending help too. Right? Yesterday's big, big, I I guess, theme of the show was that community, that that also necessity is the invention, or what is it? Necessity is the mother of invention. Right?
Dr. Amber Narro:I keep messing it up every time I say it. But those those things that happen in the storm took forty years for us to realize from 1983, which now it's like forty minutes. Right? And then everybody's starting to send in in the help at that point. Gracie, talk to me a little bit about some of the interviews that y'all did.
Dr. Amber Narro:Just, again, because you're in my hot seat. You're in one closest to me. So I'm starting with you. Tell me about your interviews.
Gracie McGee:So we interviewed three people in our time together as a group. Cameron and Kevin went together to interview our first interviewee, and that was miss Martha Ebrecht. She and her husband own the Feed and Seed in Ponchatula. Is that correct? If y'all wanna check me on that?
Dr. Amber Narro:Yes. Okay. Awesome. Kevin says yes.
Gracie McGee:Awesome. And then we also got the opportunity to speak to senator Bill Wheat and his experience in the flood. And then lastly, Kevin and I got to speak to miss Sharon Schilling, who is a longtime Ponchatula resident. And they had, they didn't really have so much as, like, an established business for the community, but they were more, like, living off of their farm than selling from their farm.
Dr. Amber Narro:Wonderful. Ben, were they ready to talk to you when you came in and you gave them a call?
Ben Byrd:I was not able to be involved directly with the interview processes, so I can't, like, directly answer that question.
Dr. Amber Narro:Okay. Well, what what was your responsibility with with the stories that you guys wrote?
Ben Byrd:I did help, like, format and write the initial drafts of the first and second story. That was probably one of my biggest contributions.
Dr. Amber Narro:Wonderful. Who are my interviewers then? Who talked? Wonderful. Kevin, tell me what your, your thought on these individuals wanting to share their story from 1983.
Dr. Amber Narro:Tell me. Okay. He's asking me to repeat the question here. So tell me about what the response was from the individuals who wanted to share their stories with you. Were they willing to talk to you?
Dr. Amber Narro:Did they wanna share with you?
Kevin Chavarria:Mostly, yes. The first one we met with, was with Martha. She was very willing to speak to me. I went to the feed and seed in Pontula, and she was, you know, very happy to meet someone who's interested in this. And I told her, you know, this is we're doing this for Southeastern because we got all this money from, the flood.
Kevin Chavarria:But once I said that, you could see, like, her, like, change expression a little bit, like a little bit of annoyed and upset. And I didn't, I initially I didn't like know why, but when me and Cam went and we were interviewing her, I saw why it was because, well, you know, they, were, the money was distributed, three different ways, I believe. Right? And, they were told, oh, after the third distribution, there was no more. That's what they were told, but then out of the blue, there were still money and they were giving it to random, like, rec centers, to some parks, to charities.
Kevin Chavarria:And these communities were, like, devastated because that's why are you giving money to these communities when we need it? These communities weren't even there when the flood happened. So why should they why do they deserve a single dollar? Right. And so that's where, like, that's where I finally got to see where that expression was coming from, from Martha.
Kevin Chavarria:She was aggravated and annoyed that, you know, that we're getting money and, like, all these other communities are getting a piece of money from the flood.
Dr. Amber Narro:Right. One of the things that I wanna make sure that we are we are respectful for on this is that when the money was distributed, it was from the residuals from the money that was, deposited into the account. So the the original flood settlement was still there. The residuals were from the money that was not, claimed from the individuals who, were in the storm. So this money actually increased over time.
Dr. Amber Narro:So what they were giving back to the community was from the residuals of it, but they also went back, and they were also giving it back to the community as well. The final distribution, as as per the public record on this, this was in, October of last year that this was, said in open court, so I'm not revealing anything that's that is not true here. But, judge judge Jeff Johnson gave each of the family members money up until the point that they would be taxed on it so that they wouldn't receive a tax on this money that would lower actually the income that they would get off of this, and what was given to the community was the leftover that would have been taxed anyway in that, in that distribution from the court records themselves. So I do wanna make sure that we also, acknowledge that all of and anything that that was distributed to Southeastern as as, and in the Honors Department in this area. And I'm very careful on what I'm saying right now because I wanna make sure that I am delivering it factually, is that we will be covering things from this story, and we are accountable for making sure that we are, using every dollar to commemorate and also to allow our public to understand what happened over this forty year lawsuit and to respect what happened.
Dr. Amber Narro:So nothing is gonna there will be no big thing, big structure done at Southeastern or anything that's going into anything less than, telling this story. As well, there was a scholarship that was developed that's specifically going to help people who were descendants of this storm. That's the number one, reason that you would earn this scholarship, which will be delivered in the next two years. It's an endowed scholarship that will last forever here at Southeastern, and the number one person that can benefit from this is if they are descendant of this storm. So I wanna be very clear on that that this anything that was distributed to Southeastern is going to go back into benefiting people who were affected by this storm.
Dr. Amber Narro:So that stated, there was definitely some there was some, social media stuff that happened on the storm and making sure that that money went back to where it was supposed to, but that final distribution did go to the families where it was supposed to go, and made sure that those families would get the maximum amount that they were allowed as per Jeff Johnson from, I think that was an October 31, judgment that happened last year in 2025. So look up the records, back check me on that, but that is that that was what was in open court. So, when you were talking about that, Matt, and people are sharing their stories, you guys are the business people, so, of course, y'all are looking at the impact as far as the dollars are concerned, and that's definitely something that y'all wanna ask about. Did the stories soften when y'all were talking to them? Were you able to see people kind of soften and tell you their stories to make sure that their, what what they experienced was conveyed.
Matthew Lewis:I feel like a lot of people that were either a victim of the flood or knew people that were victims of the flood had a big problem with the money being sent out, and they felt like they weren't getting everything they deserved. And they really wanted their main point was to make sure that they knew that the people knew they weren't getting the money they deserved.
Kevin Chavarria:Oh, gotcha.
Matthew Lewis:I heard I forgot which interviewer said it, but it was a quote, and they said, like, people had to go in their house and count thing by thing to say what they missed and how, like, that's basically impossible to do, so nobody was getting enough money. Nobody thought they wanted or deserved, and they got it so late that it didn't even matter anymore.
Dr. Amber Narro:Exactly. And that's kinda what we were talking about yesterday is that by the time you consider what people were not awarded early enough to make a difference, you gotta think about that those dollars that they lost weren't making any money for them either. Right? So that's that's what their concern is, is that you didn't just affect it it didn't just affect that time. It affected our futures as well.
Dr. Amber Narro:One of the things that came out of this case is that they, they just paid on that original settlement, not necessarily on what it would have been had they let that money sit there. But what senator Wheat said was that was the way that we were able to get this through. The the great thing was that senator Wheat, Jeff Johnson, the legislature, governor Edwards, all of the people who are in place at that time could really hear from people that they knew and they understood and that it kinda became this perfect storm where they were able to finally get this settlement funded. These people didn't think that this was ever gonna happen. One of the things that Lauren Bennett said when she was with us is that it almost became a joke in households.
Dr. Amber Narro:Right? That people were like, yeah. Right. That's never gonna happen. You know?
Dr. Amber Narro:I'll wait I'll wait till Christmas for that one. Sure. The whole family's gonna go on vacation off of this money that's never coming. Right? And then it finally did.
Dr. Amber Narro:And settlements were very different depending on what people lost for this storm as well. Right, Cam? Tell me about it.
Cameron Alexander:Yes. Everything was different for each family. The Ebrecht family, they was more they were more focused focused on the business, the feed and seed. Sharon's ceiling, she was more focused on her house and her home and her family, her farm that she lived off of.
Dr. Amber Narro:Very good. And that's kinda and it's different for every person. Right? Sometimes you're thinking about the business and how that can go on. And you guys kinda shared that in some of your stories that some of the business their business strategies had to change with this.
Dr. Amber Narro:There was a story about chickens. Right? The the the we used to do chickens and eggs and things like that, and that had to change after the storm. Tell me which one of you can can tell me about that.
Gracie McGee:I think, Kevin, honestly, if you wanna touch on that because I know that's Martha's story and you developed kind of a personal relationship with her from interviewing, I think you would have the most accurate information.
Dr. Amber Narro:Tell me about Martha, Kevin. Her chickens.
Kevin Chavarria:Yeah. Martha was a very interesting character. She was very nice. But, from what I remember, her, they had this big before the flood, they owned what? It was about how many acres, Cam?
Kevin Chavarria:What do you know?
Dr. Amber Narro:A lot of acres.
Terry Veillon:A lot
James Toole:of acres.
Dr. Amber Narro:The numbers don't matter.
Kevin Chavarria:It was a lot of acres of land, where it was just a whole chicken operation, a whole chicken operation. They had laying hens and, they also grew hens, you know, for eating. And what the flood came and just devastated the whole thing. And their operation was, they had all these laying these chickens that laid eggs, they had them in cages and the chickens would lay eggs and they had them stacked up, stacked up. And when the flood came, a night before Martha told us that her, husband and a couple of family members went out and they had this little, right, in their property.
Kevin Chavarria:They have, like, this little creek that passes through. And, Martha saw that this creek was, like, you know, getting higher and higher, like the flood was, the water was increasing and, she sent her husband to, you know, go fix it, go put some piles of sand or something to block the water off because it's gonna reach the chickens and the chickens might die. And so, yeah, the husband, they fly, they, like, block the water. But, eventually, they saw that there's there's no point in it because the water just kept rising and rising and rising. And then I think the next day, the flood had happened and those stacks of chickens that were laying, at least 80% of those chickens that were laying died because the water drowned them.
Sheila Cruz:Right. And And there
Dr. Amber Narro:was a lot of farmland out there that that happened to. Right? Crops as well as livestock and and all sorts of things that had to either be evacuated or that were, that that succumbed to the flood. Right? So I appreciate you guys really kinda covering this story.
Dr. Amber Narro:Ben, what did what did you guys learn from doing this as college students, and what can you bring to your futures from this from this experience?
Ben Byrd:I think the biggest thing, especially from, like, a business perspective is, like, like, like, were saying, looking at the economic impacts and seeing from, like, how just one event can cause, like, so much economic damage in an area. And, like, how how how do you recover from that? You know? I mean, it's taken years to recover from that, and forty years later, that settlement, they're finally getting some relief from that.
Dr. Amber Narro:Right. And it wasn't just a year to rebuild. Right? It was many years for many folks. So that was one of the things that was kind of a theme of all of your stories is that it wasn't just that one year.
Dr. Amber Narro:It might have felt like a year for the community to kinda get back to normal and kinda have all your infrastructure working a little bit. But the homes and the values and the families, it took a long time, right, Kim? Yes. Absolutely. She's one word, yes.
Dr. Amber Narro:Long, long time. Very good. Thank you to our business folks who just shared that with us. We also have another group here with us who's been kind of covering they were called the health care group, but I really think when they started digging in, they started pulling at some heartstrings as well to kind of talk about these things. So, James, I'm gonna start with you because, again, you're in my hot seat.
Dr. Amber Narro:So tell us who you are, where you from.
James Toole:Alright. My name is James Toole. I'm from Crossville, Tennessee. Excellent.
Terry Veillon:Hello. My name is Terry Veillon. I am from Covington, Louisiana.
Dr. Amber Narro:These two are both military, so thank you for your service. We appreciate you.
Sheila Cruz:I'm Sheila Cruz. I'm from Gonzales, Louisiana.
Dr. Amber Narro:Very good.
Samaya Brown:My name is Samaya Brown and I'm also from Gonzales, Louisiana. Awesome.
Melanie Fletcher:My name is Melanie Fletcher and I'm from Springfield, Louisiana.
Dr. Amber Narro:Excellent. Any of y'all heard about this nineteen eighty three flood before you got to class? Nope. Nope. All and you're not that far, Right?
Dr. Amber Narro:I mean, tell me about tell me about this experience and and actually being from out of state, James. I mean, coming in on this and going, okay. A flood in an area where I don't know nobody and I don't know anything, how do you garner respect for an area that you didn't know anybody from? You hadn't heard about this before. You're just hearing about it in class from a judge and a senator and yada yada.
Dr. Amber Narro:Tell me why we care.
James Toole:So being from Tennessee, I didn't have any prior experience with this. We didn't even get floods where I where I grew up. We grew up on a plateau, not near any river. So unless the pond went up a little bit, I didn't see a flood. Learning about the the history of the nineteen eighty three flood and garnering respect for the people really for me came from interviewing with people who lived through it.
James Toole:We ended up doing three interviews for people that had lived through the flood and hearing their stories and seeing what they had to do to rebuild, how they leaned on their family members, their friends to live with them while they rebuilt their house, working full time, and building their house themselves gave me a lot of respect for the people down here.
Dr. Amber Narro:Excellent. Terry, when you're talking about the people who are in this area, you actually have a business that's in Ponchatula right now, don't you? You just
Terry Veillon:I used to.
Dr. Amber Narro:Very good.
Terry Veillon:Yeah.
Dr. Amber Narro:So tell me about understanding the way that these individuals had to kinda change their lives if they lived, worked, raised their families, the whole play thing in this place, and then this thing comes and takes it away. You're a dad. You are a a a a family man, been in the military, living in this area. Tell me what that was like for you to hear their stories and kinda convey that as a dad.
Terry Veillon:It's pretty crazy to think about in the middle of the well, super early in the morning that your entire house is getting flooded and you have to pick up. Well, I mean, we interviewed one woman. Her baby was two months, three, four months old.
James Toole:About a month old.
Terry Veillon:About a month old.
Dr. Amber Narro:Yeah. Carried it out of
Terry Veillon:the water. Carried it above her head. And one of the big things for me as a dad is security for my family and planning for the future and and, you know, financial, you know, home security, stuff like that. And I just can't imagine.
Dr. Amber Narro:Indeed. One of the things that came out of this, I think it was from your guys' group, is that a lot of things were mortgaged or on loans and things like that. Then those loans still had to be paid. Right? And they still had to make sure that they covered their responsibility of those things while they may have been lost to them.
Dr. Amber Narro:Right? And understanding what that can do with an with a family as well as with a community had to be something that was just kinda treacherous for you guys just entering your life, and maybe some of them were about that age when it happened. Sheila, tell me about hearing those stories from these individuals and and its impact on you as an individual.
Sheila Cruz:I didn't know about the nineteen eighty three flood until now. And hearing and reading the stories while making them was very interesting to see how the community got together and worked worked. Like, they were like a big family all
Dr. Amber Narro:in one. The community aspect comes out of this again.
Sheila Cruz:It was sad to see how they lost their memories, their lives, their childhood being swept away in amount a few
Dr. Amber Narro:hours. Mhmm.
Sheila Cruz:Hours. How they had to rebuild their lives again. And same person she had lost a car that was, like, her childhood in. You interviewed Jeff. Right?
Sheila Cruz:Right. He had lost a lot in his childhood. From what I read from the article, he had lost a lot in his childhood. So, that's childhood memories lost and also you having to rebuild to start off your future. Indeed.
Sheila Cruz:And it's sad to see and also people getting injured and hurt or not just physically but mentally.
Dr. Amber Narro:Indeed. And I don't know
Sheila Cruz:what they're going through right now because some of that mental stuff can still stick with you.
Dr. Amber Narro:Indeed. You're talking about family memories and pictures. And, you know, we talked about this in yesterday's show about how at that time you didn't have cell phones or, you know, the landline was probably out. So there's no communication with the outside world. Right?
Dr. Amber Narro:And the possibility of people getting in, they couldn't get to you either because everything was flooded. So you're basically covering the story from the out the outer perimeters of what's happening at that time before you can get in and kinda relying on search and rescue and people who are going in and and taking care of individuals, getting them out of this area to tell you the story about what's going on. But you can't really see it yet. Right? And then when you finally do see it, the water's gone, so you don't see that major impact.
Dr. Amber Narro:You didn't have drones at that time flying over these these areas. Right? Maybe had some helicopter shots and whatnot. But not the real story that we would probably get five minutes later after a storm at this point when, you know, a kid puts his drone up in the air and and flies it over the area and says, this is what you're looking at. Right?
Dr. Amber Narro:That didn't happen in 1983. This is only forty something years ago. This isn't like it was in the eighteen hundreds. Right? This is this is very new and still very fresh to a lot of people who had this happen to them.
Dr. Amber Narro:Samaya, talk to me about losing those memories. I mean, if you if you could just kind of imagine that right now and you guys are all digital babies. Right? Your parents probably have digital pictures of you from when you were born at this point. This is goes back almost to the time when, as as y'all's age, I mean, cell phones were pretty much here, getting there, and, you know, probably about toddler ish, y'all got that marked forever.
Dr. Amber Narro:So the thought of losing all your pictures is probably not a real one for you. Right? But this was a real thing at that time. They always, we always say that, like, when a when a house is burning down, people grab their picture books. Right?
Dr. Amber Narro:And that's that's the thing that you hear. And that was kind of this thought during this time. It came so fast, though, they couldn't get their memories. Can you imagine, like, losing all of your childhood pictures?
Samaya Brown:Yeah. No. I would be, pretty devastated, but, it's different from today as in, like, we have cell phones. Like, you know, it's easier to capture those moments versus having to hurry up and grab what you can in a short amount of time being that, like, your life is in danger. It's only so much that you can do in a short amount of time and so much to think about, and it happened so abruptly.
Samaya Brown:So, you know, they had to move fast. Indeed.
Dr. Amber Narro:Tell me about moving fast in this. Where where are we able to what was salvageable at that time?
Melanie Fletcher:So me and James went and talked to the Cornell family, and at the time, they were able to catch it fairly quickly. Now it was the middle of the night. They were all in bed and everything, but they had their three kids and their neighbor's three kids on the floor having a sleepover. And so fairly quickly, they found, oh, water's coming to the house, and it's coming up quickly. So they were able to get as much as they could up on top of cabinets and shelves and stuff.
Melanie Fletcher:And so the whole bottom from, like, it was a one story home and, like, up to the bottom of the windows. Mhmm. So all that was damaged. All that had to be replaced. But luckily, they were able to save a lot.
Melanie Fletcher:But there was tons of damages and end up damages more than what the house was even worth when they built it.
Dr. Amber Narro:Indeed. Now you guys were able to to get some pictures with your stories. And what did what did those pictures tell you? Pictures are worth a thousand words. Right?
Dr. Amber Narro:We certainly don't wanna lose them as we just stated. So tell me, James, what what did you see in those pictures? What did that do to you being able to see that?
James Toole:So the pictures I saw, most of our pictures did come from the Cornell family. They actually live maybe a half a mile from Ms. Linda Willis, the woman who carried her child. So they're they're neighbors. The pictures I saw of all of their belongings either up on countertops, lifted up on two cinder blocks to keep them out of the water or on top of tables.
James Toole:That was was tough because there's so much there's only a little bit of space you can put things on to to save it. But the the the real thing was the pictures of the families standing standing in the water outside their homes, just looking around, just watching the flood kinda consume everything that they have and just the acceptance of that in those photos, knowing that there's nothing they can do and they gotta figure out how to get through it was, pretty stark. It was pretty real.
Dr. Amber Narro:Now in the very beginning of this conversation, right after we finished talking to, kinda getting the lay of land of what had happened in this, probably about three or four weeks in, you scheduled a time to go out there. Right? Were you the only one that went out to where it happened in your group?
James Toole:For the first interview with, miss Willis, yes, I was. And on the second interview, Melanie came with me for the Cornell family.
Dr. Amber Narro:Excellent. So tell me about being in that area and knowing that you were standing on that ground that had gone underwater. I couldn't really believe it while
James Toole:I was standing out there because it was incredibly flat. If And beautiful, by the way.
Dr. Amber Narro:This is a beautiful part of Tangeba Hood Parish, But for
James Toole:standing out there, if you look to your left and your right, you can't tell that there's even elevation, that there's a low ground and a high ground, like
Dr. Amber Narro:Where'd it come? Where'd come from? All of
James Toole:that to be flooded, it didn't look like it would end. It it would just the whole area would have had to been underwater and just the sheer amount of water that came through would have to be immense.
Dr. Amber Narro:Right. And we're not putting blame on anything other than what the court case has stated. Right? The court case put the put the fault with the the building contractors as well as the DOTD. This was a lawsuit that was paid out by the state of Louisiana on the account of these individuals.
Dr. Amber Narro:So this was a huge this was a huge thing in that area that the the fault was on folks who were building the project. So that's where the, the payout came from to help those individuals recover. And by the way, I also wanna put some accolades out to those attorneys and those, individuals who were helping put the case together who did reserve their fees for until it got paid out so that there wasn't additional hardships on these families. They didn't go after these individuals. They really worked together to try to put this through.
Dr. Amber Narro:And I will say that while this was a failure on the account to come and help these individuals, in the end, that your current government officials and your people who were elected in this process were the people who came in and said, this needs to be righted. You know, this is wrong that this has lasted so long. Did you guys feel any, what was the response from the folks that you were talking about about finally getting that payout from this from this settlement? Melanie?
Melanie Fletcher:Well, a lot of them wasn't expecting to finally get this payment. It was a happy but somewhat mournful surprise.
Samaya Brown:Mhmm.
Melanie Fletcher:The Cornell's, when asked about it, said, yeah. We weren't expecting it and all that. Their kids got a little bit, which was nice. So they were able to work on some projects that need to be done. But people like their friends that were lived in Robert that experienced it probably worse than them had water, like, up to the top top windows of their houses, and they had passed before they received the money.
Melanie Fletcher:So it was very bittersweet.
Dr. Amber Narro:Yeah. And that's the story. Right? Is that some of these individuals died before they ever got it. I talked to an individual over, when I went and when I was, doing some research for the setting up the class who said that her mother had passed in March and everything was funded in December, right?
Dr. Amber Narro:So you're talking nine months before it it was finally taken care of. So and the one thing that that person told me is that she just wanted a picture of her mom and dad in our in our, in our work, and we're trying to get that done. So I really appreciate all of you, really kinda committing to this project and and sharing your experiences with us and knowing that this was a something that we're truly trying to do for the community and to leave it, but also that it was a learning experience for all of you. I do want to make sure that anybody who is affected from this flood understands that any of the, money that came through to the Honors Program will be spent exactly on this flood, exactly what it was assigned to from that court, from that court case, and that, we will definitely have something to remember those who went through this storm and understand that this can happen. Right?
Dr. Amber Narro:That if people don't come together and we don't put people in office who will get things done, things can take a really long time. So it's important for us to all vote. Right? And Senator Wheat reminded us of that when he came to talk to us. That it's important for us to get involved and to share our stories and to share that impact because we can make a difference.
Dr. Amber Narro:Right? So, hopefully, we've all learned that. Any closing remarks from our group? Nope? Getting a no?
Dr. Amber Narro:So I just wanna, I wanna thank all of y'all and your heart to this. This has been a pleasure teaching this class. It's been a pleasure being with you and seeing your heart come out in this as well. And I wanna thank our listeners here for hearing the story of the nineteen eighty three floods, understanding what had happened, and definitely invite you in the fall to our grand opening of, what will be finished over the summer with a special project group who is bring it all to fruition, taking these stories and making them permanent here at Southeastern and in our community. We've been challenged with trying to put something together that might move around a little bit.
Dr. Amber Narro:So, hopefully, it'll be coming to a library near you. I'll certainly be talking to, our library folks and our library administration in in the future to make sure that it does kinda go around the parish and share the story of what happened because it's super important for us to all still be involved in these conversations. So thank you for listening here at ninety point nine FM The Lion. We're at the Lion's Roundtable. I'm Amber Narro.
Dr. Amber Narro:Y'all have a great day.
Todd Delaney:Thank you for joining us today. If you missed any part of the show, you can listen to the Lion's Roundtable on demand at our website, lionupradio.org. The podcast version is also available for download from Amazon, Google, Spotify, and TuneIn.
