Personal Background

My home town. I was born and raised in Cajun country, Ville Platte, Louisiana, the parish seat of Evangeline Parish.  French for “Flat Town,” Ville Platte was founded by Marcelin Garand, an officer in Napoleon’s army.  Ville Platte was officially named during a meeting of early settlers, including Garand, held in the home of my great-great grandfather, Alexis La Tour. Just outside of town is the beautiful Chicot State Park, the favorite playground for Ville Platte citizens and where I spent much of my time.

Ville Platte is also known for its Cotton Festival, Le Festival de la Viande Boucanèe (smoked meat festival) and Tournoi, the latter being a recreation of an ancient jousting event, apparently introduced into the New World by some of Napoleon's troops.  Ville Platte is also a big rice farming area, the rice fields being given over to raising crawfish during the off-season. The population of Ville Platte is only 10,000, but if you like to hunt, fish and eat, Ville Platte is the place for you.

My father. My father (whom everybody called "Dubie") was born into a large family in Ville Platte in 1900 during a time that French was not only the first language but the only language.  By the time he went to school, speaking French on the school ground was forbidden, and he learned to speak some English around age eight.  As a young man he worked for the AAA (Agricultural Adjustment Act) for a while, then took a clerking job with Continental Oil Company (Conoco) which had just discovered oil near Ville Platte. He stayed with Conoco until he retired. My father's father, my pere pere, ran a jewelry store on Main Street in Ville Platte, and my mere mere took care of the family and their big house on the corner of LaTour Street and East Washington Street.

My mother. Born on a small farm in 1913, my mother, Linda, was a “hillbilly” from a big family of Scots Irish descent from Rocky Mount, a small settlement in rural north Louisiana. She worked her way through college bussing tables and grading papers, and emerged valedictorian of her class with a degree in chemistry education. During the Depression she ventured south for a teaching job, and ended up in Vidrine, a small settlement just outside Ville Platte.  There she met my father and fell in love with him and the French people and culture. She married my father in 1937 and moved to Ville Platte where she ended up teaching school for over fifty years.  Although she acquired a nice Cajun accent, she never learned to speak French. But she did learn how to cook Cajun style and cook it very well.

My sister. My older sister, Sybil, has lived in the Atlanta area for over twenty years, and with her husband, Lawson, raised five girls to adulthood. It has been great living so close to her and her family, and it is one of the main reasons that I chose to come to Atlanta and Georgia State. So far three of the five girls have married and now have their own families. Lawson is a retired engineer, and Sybil has recently discovered her talent as a gifted artist.

My boyhood. Our house was right across Evangeline Drive from Ville Platte High School, from which I graduated in 1963. Besides school, my boyhood activities centered almost exclusively around Boy Scouts, Ham radio, baseball (Little League, Babe Ruth, high school, & American Legion), and Saturday afternoon matinees at one of our two movie theaters, the Jan and the Platte.  Although I am sometimes called a "coonass," a self-effacing affectionate term Cajuns call themselves, my great-great grandfather on my father’s side came directly from the Bordeaux region of France (Bergerac-Dordogne), not through Canada.  So my father's side of the family is technically French, not Cajun. I can cook Cajun food reasonably well – sausage gumbo, sauce piquante, and rice & gravy can all be found on my stove from time to time.  If I’ve just returned from a visit to Ville Platte, I will also have some smoked pork sausage, tasso, and boudin, and maybe even a ponce boure.  Just for the record, blackened food is not traditional Cajun food – it was recently “invented” by Chef Paul Prudhomme who is from Opelousas, LA (see below).

Opelousas and New Orleans. My father's family was not originally from Ville Platte, but from Opelousas, the parish seat of St. Landry Parish about 18 miles from Ville Platte. It is the second oldest town (after New Orleans) in French Louisiana and is the home of Jim Bowie of the Alamo and the famous Bowie knife. Because Opelousas is so old, throughout Cajun country it is known simply as "the village." If someone says, "Je vais au village" it literally means "I am going to the village," but what it really means is "I am going to Opelousas." If someone says, "Je vais en ville" it literally means "I am going into town," but it really means "I am going to New Orleans." I know of no towns in Louisiana except New Orleans and Opelousas afforded such significance in the Cajun language. As kids my sister and I liked visiting our great aunts in Opelousas because they gave us Jell-O and let us pick pecans in the back yard.

College. I spent four years at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, ostensibly studying geology, but concerned primarily with LSU football and the Sigma Pi Fraternity. I also was interested in ROTC, at least most of the time. Studying seemed secondary, but I somehow emerged with my degree right on schedule. Between semesters my summer days were spent working as a roustabout with Conoco, in the oil field near Ville Platte, earning almost enough each summer to put myself through school. Summer nights found me lifeguarding at the big swimming pool at the Ville Platte City Park.

The U.S. Army. Upon finishing my Geology B.S. degree I was commissioned a 2^nd Lt. and entered active duty in 1968 with the U.S. Army.  After artillery school at Fort Sill and flight school at Fort Wolters and Fort Rucker, I shipped out to South Vietnam where I flew a Huey helicopter from June 1969 to June 1970 with the 1^st Squadron, 10^th Cavalry (4th Infantry Division) in the Central Highlands.  Later, while still on active duty, I got my commercial fixed-wing license and instrument ticket from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, FL.  My service in the Vietnam War is something of which I am very proud, and I recall with great fondness the wonderful young men with whom I served there. I recently completed my Vietnam War memoirs for my family and friends, and I am currently working on a personal Vietnam War web site. I finished my obligation in the military at Fort Polk, Louisiana where I worked at post headquarters as a writer of Army correspondence and other official documents. My claim to fame was that I wrote the all volunteer Army (VOLAR) policy document for Fort Polk.

Graduate school. After completing four years of military service, I entered graduate school at the University of Montana where I worked under the supervision of petrologist Don W. Hyndman and earned my M.S. in Geology.  Later at the University of Western Ontario I worked under the supervision of geochemist W.S. Fyfe, my “boyhood idol" from my undergraduate days, earning my Ph.D. in Geology.

Georgia State. After completing a 2-year post-doc studying the geochemistry and origin of Archean iron formations, I moved in 1981 to Atlanta to join the faculty at Georgia State University.  I have been here ever since, and I have enjoyed my career immensely.  The colleagues I have worked with and the students I have met and mentored have enriched my life beyond measure. Georgia State has changed a great deal since I arrived, having evolved from a teaching school catering to non-traditional students to a major research university with a wonderful traditional student body.

My newest family. In 1985 I met the lovely Kit Kammer whom I somehow convinced to marry me in 1987 and who remarkably has put up with me for all these years. As part of the deal I also gained a wonderful stepdaughter, Katherine, of whom we are both very proud. Kit is a highly successful career consultant and executive coach who owns her own business in Atlanta, Kammer & Associates, Inc. Gifted with great talent, Katherine recently graduated in Theater Arts at Boston College. She is now a struggling stage actress known as Katherine Nolan Brown and living in Manhattan. When not performing she works for a casting agency and walks dogs on the New York streets.

South Louisiana music. The center for recording of Cajun and Zydeco music as well as the more recently recognized South Louisiana Rock 'n Roll known as Louisiana Swamp Pop music, Ville Platte's most famous man-made landmark is Floyd's Record Shop. Back in the 1950's Floyd Soileau opened a record store and started a recording business known as Flat Town Music. He pioneered the mail order record business by advertising on late-night clear channel radio stations across the country. Soon he was sending out in the mail thousands of little 45rpm records of local bands and singers who, as a result, gained national attention and Billboard ranking. Floyd's is still going strong, and now seems to be in the cultural and nostalgia business, a throwback to the innocent fifties. You can listen to this unique music over the internet by linking to Floyd's Records and selecting a live feed station (I like KBON in Eunice, La.). Check out a more complete listing here: Cajun Radio.

Hobbies and Interests.  In my spare time I like to do nothing, and I have no hobbies or interests. Interests invariably lead to hobbies, and hobbies are hard work. I have always thought that it’s safer to develop no interests, lest a hobby be looming just over the horizon. Not that I've never had any interests. Certainly I've had several interests over the years, but after a while none of them was very interesting anymore. Looking back, I'd say I was pretty lucky. If just one of those interests had remained interesting long enough, it might have led to a hobby. And where would I be then? Working on a hobby instead of doing nothing. It's amazing how well some things work out.