MR. RONNIE THERIOT’S HURRICANE AUDREY STORY

MR. RONNIE THERIOT’S HURRICANE AUDREY STORY

(The following story was transcribed from a recorded phone conversation between Mr. Ronnie Theriot and Mr. Charles McNeely on February 22^nd, 2024) 

CHARLES MCNEELY Hello everyone, this is Charles McNeely with Dev Doc Theatre and it is an honor and a privilege to be talking to uh… Ron, I wanted to ask you, do you prefer Ron or Ronnie? What are you comfortable with? 

RONNIE THERIOT You can call me Ronnie. I adopted the name Ron here in Texas, everybody in Louisiana calls me Ronnie 

MCNEELY Okay, I’ll do that since I’m over here in Louisiana, but, and I’m Charles or Charlie whatever you’re comfortable with, so whatever you feel like. 

I appreciate you meeting with me. 

I met your cousin. I went to school with him, Greg Wicke, and he got me in touch with you.  I’m in Lake Charles and you are in Harris County, north of Houston.

RONNIE’S CHILDHOOD IN CAMERON PARISH, LOUISIANA 

RONNIE Earliest memories are probably that we lived with my paternal grandparents up until one year prior to Hurricane Audrey. So, in 1956, we built a home on an adjacent piece of property.  

My mother was a schoolteacher, and my dad was basically a cattleman/farner with his dad. 

MCNEELY Where did your mother teach? 

RONNIE She taught at Creole High School, which was basically elementary and high school. 

And her last years were at what was known as South Cameron Elementary School, which was a separate school from South Cameron High, but when I was going to school, all that was consolidated.  Actually her retirement was longer than her years at teaching. She lived to be 93 years old.

MCNEELY The name of your grandparents, what were their names? 

RONNIE My grandmother was Veronica, and grandfather was Ursin, but he went by the name of “Son”. So, my dad’s name was “Man” and my grandfather’s name was “Son”. It seemed quite common in our area for many folks to be know mostly by a nickname.  My mother’s name was Estelle and my dad’s real name was John Mildred but he hated that name, Mildred. 

MCNEELY I can imagine, yes, yes. 

RONNIE My grandmother’s French name was Veronique. 

MCNEELY Oh, lovely name. Do you have any siblings? 

RONNIE No siblings, I was the only child. So, in my early age, I spent my time with my grandmother there at home while my mother went off to teach. But I don’t remember too much of that time span. I remember, older years, after they passed and I guess the time after Hurricane Audrey, having chores. So gather eggs, feed chickens, and then I helped my dad with feeding the animals mostly during the wintertime. We would give out hay and bagged feed.

We were always very subsistent.  We would butcher our own cattle and chickens. We’d have our own pigs, which provided meat and sausage.  We always had a garden which provided fresh vegatables. 

MCNEELY And you said that you spent time with your grandmother. Was there anybody else that you spent a lot of time with growing up?  

RONNIE Yeah, I had girl cousins across the road that I would visit and play with sometimes. But as far as having kids that I played with all the time, we were in the country, and nobody was really close by.  I probably spent a lot of time by myself and mostly around adults.. 

MCNEELY Okay.  Did you read or play music or what did you spend your time doing when you were by yourself so much? 

RONNIE I don’t really recall reading a lot, but after Audry I got a record player and ejoyed playing my records, mostly 45’s. And one of the things I remember from high school when transistor radios were really popular, everybody had a little handheld transistor radio and you would listen to music that way. 

That was the popular thing. In the late 50s and early 60s. And so, you listen to the new rock and roll stuff like Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly and I remember my first album was of Brenda Lee.

Just prior to Audrey, I got my first saxaphone and was getting some private lessons from the local music teacher, Mr. Renfrow. Of course, it was lost in the hurricane.  I got a new one in the 5th grade and played in the band up and throught the 11th grade. 

MCNEELY Okay, so did you have a favorite thing besides listening to music and stuff, growing up, was there one thing that you really enjoyed doing? 

RONNIE I especially enjoyed the fall when all the cattlemen would get together and bale hay for the winter months. I enjoyed helping out with the hay baling in the months of August, September and/or October. They would bale hay and the unique thing about lower Cameron Parish is all these men that were cattlemen helped each other out whenever they would work their cattle, bale hay, mend/build fences or whatever needed done.  So whenever my dad needed help working his cattle, all the local men would come help him and vice versa. Everybody helped each other and they all loaded each other’s barns with hay for the winter season. That is a very unique situation and I think it still goes on somewhat nowadays such as, for example, whenever there was the drought this past summer (2023), I know a lot of people from Louisiana brought hay to the cattlemen in Texas to help out the dire situation.. 

So, I hope that part of country spirit still survives. 

MCNEELY So, you talked about your mom was a teacher. Where did you attend school in Grand Chenier or in Creole? 

RONNIE There was Creole High School when I started elementary. You know, we didn’t have kindergarten back then so I started first grade in 1954 and my favorite teacher was my first-grade teacher, Mrs. Lucille Domingue. She taught in Cameron Parish for a long time and she was always the first grade teacher but another unique thing is after Hurricane Audrey, I actually went the first semester to Saint Margaret’s (in Lake Charles) because that’s where my cousins went and once we moved back to our home in Creole just prior to Christmas, Mrs. Domingue became my teacher again, for my second semester of the fourth grade. My mother mostly taught fourth grade for most of her career. Because of Audrey, she never taught me. Otherwise, she would have, because she was the only fourth grade teacher back then.

RONNIE’S HURRICANE AUDREY STORY

(Much of what Mr. Ronnie describes below can be found in Mrs. Nola Mae Ross’s book: Hurricane Audrey. The story in the book was written by Mr. Donald Broussard).

MCNEELY  I believe there was one  teacher, a Mr. Broussard 

RONNIE He was a boarder at my aunt and uncle’s home, Wayne and Horace Montie. They lived across the road from us, and had schoolteacher boarders living in their home probably as early as the ’40’s.  

MCNEELY What was his first name? 

RONNIE Donald Broussard. 

MCNEELY And what subject did he teach? 

RONNIE He was the Librarian, taught English, I believe. 

MCNEELY I could tell his writing was a very descriptive. It was…I could tell that he had experience with literature, 

RONNIE He was from Pecan Island, his mother and dad lived in Pecan Island. 

MCNEELY So he’s there, boarding with your aunt and uncle. For your hurricane Audrey experience, before y’all got to the attic, what do you remember? 

RONNIE Okay, let me start at my home during the early morning: what my earliest memories of that morning was that the wind was blowing very hard already. And I experienced seeing through a window, this big majestic oak tree that was in the front of our home get blown down. You know the root system just gave away and the whole tree just fell over on its side. My parents and I had been living in this newly built home for just one year which was just west of my Dad’s parents homesite.

And then my grandfather came over to get us to go to spend the storm at the Anastassie Montie residence. So that was one of the big mistakes that we all made that day.  If we would have stayed at my grandfather and grandmother’s house next door, we would have probably just gone in the attic and stayed there for the entire storm. And they would have survived, but it didn’t happen that way. 

So we got in a vehicle and drove across the road because the Montie home was kind of set way back off the highway and you had to go couple of hundred yards to get to their house. And I remember this too, when we were walking from our house to my grandparents house to go meet the vehicle, the winds were so strong making it very difficult to walk. 

As we arrived at their house, I just remember Don trying to make calls on the telephone but by this time there is no more service and he’s not able to make any connections.

We’re a total of 11 people gathered at the residence:

Mrs Anastassie Montie, Mrs. Winnie (Montie) Mouton, Mr. Horace Montie & Mrs. Wayne (Broussard) Montie, Mr. John “Man” Theriot, Mrs. Estelle (Broussard) Theriot, Ronnie Theriot (self, age 9 yrs.), Mr. Ursin “Son” Theriot, Mrs. Veronica (Sturlese) Theriot, Mrs. Zelan (Benoit) Vincent (neighbor) and Mr. Donald Broussard.

I remember after being there a short while, we looked to the south out the windows and could see water coming. It’s like in small waves, but it’s definitely rising in the back pasture of the Monte home. The home was a big old wooden structure with a stairway in the center hall leading to an unfinished, really big high ceiling attic which had wood flooring. 

And so it was easy to get in that attic, whereas my grandmother and grandfather’s house, there was no disappearing staircase like we have in our modern homes. You would have probably had to have a ladder to get to the attic. 

Once this water started rising, it happened pretty quick, so we all had to go into the attic. And, I remember Aunt Winnie, daughter of Mrs. Anastassie, who also lived in this home, was very concerned about her recently purchased rugs getting wet. So, an effort was made to roll up the new rugs and stored them high on chairs. Unfortunately, the rising water happend too quick and the rugs never made it to the attic.. 

We got into that attic and, for a good while we’re hearing sounds like ramming, like buildings may be coming from the Oak Grove area, which is the chenier that’s closest to the Gulf, the south side (of the Parish). Because there are no windows, we are unable to see what is causing all the noise and disturbance; we could only imagine some sort of structures were floating into the old house.  Praying the rosary continued. 

So we’re probably thinking that buildings are ramming the house, but we don’t know for sure. Eventually the house collapses!  And the way I remember this played out is the east wall of the house (which had a gabled roof) collapsed which caused the entire attic floor to become a giant slide towards the water causing all of us to fall in.  It wasn’t a roof that we got on, it was the east wall the house where windows would have been that became our raft. I remember next being plucked out of the water by my dad and being put on what became our only means of survival for the next several hours.  

So now we’re all 11 on this raft.  For some unknown reason, my grandparents and the neighbor friend of Mrs. Montie, Zelan Vincent, were seated on the raft a bit seperated from the rest of our group of eight people.  Just as we were starting to float towards the north, their part of the raft seperated from us probably due to the extream turbulant waters. I remember my dad shouting to my grandfather, “Take off your rubber boots.” Because when or if they would fill up with water, that would pull him under. So that’s my last memory of a conversation with them.  As we pulled away, this would become the last time we would ever see them alive again. 

One of my memories is because the winds were so strong, this made the rain feel like pins and needles picking your face, so most of the time I kept my face down in my mother’s lap. 

I also remember as we started floating towards the north, I could see when we were  passing over the highway and seeing the tops of the electric poles and see the tree tops where my grandparent’s house was. 

Once we passed those points of recognition, all you could see was just water; just like we were in the middle of the gulf.  We didn’t know for sure if we were over land or swept out to sea!  It was very frightful having no concept of where you were.

And so like I told you before, we eventually ended up just to the south of the Intercoastal Waterway, not too far from the highway itself, but, you know, it’s still all deep water. Luckily we landed in what was probably some sort of storage shed or some kind of barn that had an open gable roof. 

Only the attic was exposed above the waterline with a roof and we were all able to get into that little building and that’s where we spent the night of June 27. So that was our shelter for that night. And I remember this black horse that Don makes mention of in his story. The horse was fighting for his life trying to get untangled from I don’t know what.  All around us is this vast amount of debis that had accumulated in the area as the storm passed; mostly made up of marsh grass, building materials and trash.  

MCNEELY I was gonna ask about spending the night in that barn or shed as Mr. Broussard calls it. 

And that was, you know a little sanctuary, a little safety to it. And then you know, the next day is whenever you know, some good things started happening, I hope. 

THE RESCUE

RONNIE Yeah, the next day, we got rescued.  Myself, Don and 3 members of this this other family that landed close and joined us in the attic of the barn the evening of the 27th were the first ones picked up by a small motorboat.  They were Mrs. Vergie LaBove, 2 year old son Billy and her 7 year old nephew.  I wish I knew who that person was with the boat, but I’m pretty sure my folks knew who he was.  He brought us to the highway and we were able to walk from that point towards the the pontoon Gibbstown bridge

MCNEELY So you’re talking about highway 27 basically that runs north and south to the Gibbstown bridge and down to Oak Grove is that the uh highway you’re talking about? 

RONNIE Yeah, so we went north on the highway to the Gibbstown bridge.  I remember the water was a little over ankle deep on the highway. 

So we’re able to walk fine along that road. And I’m pretty sure the man in the motorboat went back and picked up the rest of the people and brought them to the  highway. But in the meantime, the Army “Ducks” were heading south along the highway. 

So my Dad & Mom and most of the adults, got on one of those amphibious vehicles  and headed south to see what they could find or see what was left of everybody’s homes. So we, in the meantime, are at the bridge and because of the water level is not able to open and close to boat traffic. So they had all these tugboats with barges that were moored at the bridge and I remember they brought us aboard one of the tugboats and fed us a breakfast.  We spent time on the bridge until a big load of people, including my parents, arrived from Creole.  The bridge became a momentary meeting place where everybody gathered before heading further north.

I don’t know what time it is, probably around the noon hour or later, we somehow make our way to the Claude Eagleson residence.  Do you remember the Claude Eaglesson who became one of our sheriffs in Cameron parish?

MCNEELY The name is familiar, but I don’t I don’t see a face. 

RONNIE He and his family’s residence was approximately across from what is now the Cameron Prairie National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center; just up the road beyond the pontoon bridge. 

Mr. Eagleson was a rice farmer and happens to be a first cousin to my mother.  I remember they had all their furniture stacked up on tables and things . I don’t think they had the high water in their house like we had, but they still had high water in their yard. 

My uncle Monroe Wicke met up with us there.  I think he may have been coming from a job in Texas which is where he was originally from. He is my Dad’s sister’s husband.  He and my aunt and cousins Faye and Gary were then living in Houma, Louisiana. So I went and stayed with them until the funerals of my grandparents.  In the meantime, my dad and mom were staying with Philo & Inez East.  Inez is another first cousin to my mother. They lived on on Kirkman St. In Lake Charles. 

THE AFTERMATH

RONNIE My parents stayed with the East family until they were able to find a rent house for a while in Lake Charles and I remember while we were there, they were going back and forth and recovering clothes from the destroyed Creole house and bringing it to the East residence where they would wash all the clothes to get the smelly mud out.  They used an old Maytag washing machine set up under the trees and many feet of wire strung around tree trunks to accomadate hanging all the clothes to dry. It was an ordeal to try and salvage as much clothes as possible.  The East property was pretty big in the city, in fact, they had two sons that lived on this property as well as a business. So they probably had a whole block of land on that segment of Kirkman street. 

Later in the summer, my Wicke cousins moved to the Oak Park neighborhood of Lake Charles and we stayed with them and I began the 4th grade at St Margaret’s.  In the meantime, my Dad has a crew helping him renovate my deceased grandparent’s home and my Mom is teaching at Grand Lake HS.  We were able to move back to Creole around Christmas time so and that’s my story of our migration from Creole the Lake Charles, then back to Creole.

MCNEELY Well luckily your family and friends just um that that was so helpful that everybody came together and helped out and and provided some kind of sanctuary for the family. And let me ask you, you remember during this, when you, when you felt that you were finally safe uh after Audrey? Was it whenever you got the food at Gibbstown or was it whenever you got to a home? 

When, when do you remember feeling safe after that experience? 

RONNIE I guess the day after, the sun was shining and I remember that as we got to the Gibbstown Bridge, we were probably some of the first people to arrive there and there was no more rain or strong winds; things were quiet for a change and that is when I realized I was safe.  Later on that day,of course, there was all kinds of things going on with people coming and going, but, you know, I felt definitely safer after the storm ordeal. 

I guess I also felt safe whenever I got in the vehicle with my uncle Monroe Wicke and we headed towards Houma to be with young cousins.

MCNEELY I was just curious after going through that incredible experience, when was that moment? And that makes perfect sense, being in a, in a vehicle with your uncle and, and having sunshine and, and just completely different from the 24 hours before. So thank you for sharing that. 

And but Ronnie, uh, look, you have just, I mean, like I said, I have so many stories of Hurricane Audrey, but yours is one of… they’re all extremely powerful and yours is so unique and um unlike anybody else’s. And so I really appreciate you sharing that with us and I know that, you know, if we are able to, to get this into some kind of digital library, people will be able to hear this and, and see your words for generations to come and they’ll know what it really was like back then in 1957, so thank you uh for sharing that. And I have a couple of more questions unless there’s anything else that you wanted to say about Audrey or anything else as far as an experience that you had growing up in Cameron Parish. 

RONNIE I was in the (High School) Band even in the 5th grade and I excelled pretty well throughout my high school time .

MCNEELY What instrument did you play?

RONNIE I played the saxophone. The funny thing about it… I just started taking private lessons prior to Hurricane Audrey, with our local music teacher; I think I was in the third grade and during the summer.  My parents bought me a saxophone and I was able to find that saxophone in a water filled ditch very close to where our fairly new house floated to.  This was in the area north of our homesite know as High Island.  Several families lived on that back ridge.  So my parents actually had a crew and several family members and friends to help demolished the house to try to save as much of the lumber to put into the rebuilding of my grandparent’s house which stayed near its origingal location, but just off its piers.  So my grandparent’s house became our home after being remodeled and then we moved back, like I said before Christmas in 1957. 

That house survived all the way up until Rita. That’s where I lived growing up and my dad had fixed up that house and most the main shell was the original house that my grandparents had lived in. 

MCNEELY That’s amazing. Rita was in 2005, same year as Katrina and yeah, that’s quite a legacy for that house and the material going through Audrey and then being used for so long after that; that’s good craftsmanship. So thank you for sharing that. That’s uh wow. 

And yeah, I didn’t realize you were a musician. I know that some people I’ve spoken to they, they stayed the storm in South Cameron HS and, and they wore Band outfits from South Cameron because their clothes were ripped off of them or something during the hurricane. So when you said that I, it made me think about those other stories of people having to put on Band outfits in order to leave. 

RONNIE I actually did get another saxophone when I started the fifth grade at South Cameron which now has added an elementary wing to the high school. It is strange to look back at the old 1959 Yearbook to see that the band was made up of kids in the 5th grade through 12th. We looked like a “band of misfits!”  We were a very small band, but we were a proud band. We marched in the Fur Festival parades and even one time in a parade in Port Arthur, TX. 

MCNEELY That’s great memory. 

That’s wonderful. Well, good. Well, Ronnie, the second to last question I have for you is, you know, after all this and the experiences of that storm and everything else as far as, you know, the saxophone and things like that, how …how did that experience shape the man you are today? 

What lessons did it teach you about life and about, you know, going on with life? What had it taught you and what, how it’s made you the man you are today? 

RONNIE The only thing I can say probably is never give up. 

Whatever problems you have or whatever things you encounter, you just work through it and I think I’ve probably had a pretty easy life other than the Audrey situation.  So things have worked out for me and I’ve been successful, and I have successfully retired and am enjoying my retirement right now. So it’s just you work through; you don’t give up. You just work through your problems and the result is a more even keel and less drama in your life. 

I don’t understand how people can let themselves get involved do deeply with alcholism and illisit drugs that is so damaging to families, careers, etc.  I don’t ever see myself wanting to get involved with things like that.  I just want and I’m trying to live out my life as healthy as I possibly so I can enjoy myself.

MCNEELY That’s wonderful. Yes, and that’s such a strength that this experience has given you and I wanted to ask you what did you do after graduating high school?  What …what job or jobs did you have or did you continue your education? 

RONNIE After high school, I went to USL in Lafayette, LA., which is is now called the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and completed a BS degree in Geology. During my time in college, as the Vietnam War was continuing, a military draft lottery was initiated by picking numbers at random for each day of the year.  If you drew a low number, your chances of being drafted were pretty certain.  Well, my number was 25, so I knew that once I completed my degree, I would be headed to basic training in the good old US Army.  I did my two year requirement and my permanent station was at Fort Wainwright near Fairbanks, Alaska, so I experienced all four seasons in in Alaska and that was good and a unique experience for me.

After the Army, I returned home, got Married, moved to Morgan City and was an Engineer Assistant with Texaco for the next four years. Then we moved to Houston in the fall of 1977 and have been here ever since.  I call this home now. 

MCNEELY So you, you were a Geologist basically and uh 

RONNIE I was a reservoir geologist for the first 17 years of my career working with a pipeline company where we would seek out oil & gas reserves from the producer to hookup to our pipelines which we would inturn deliver to our coustomers. Then during the downturn of the oil & gas industry in the 80s, I stayed with the same company but got more into the back office support to the purchase, selling & trading staff as a Contract Administrator by negotiating legal language in the contracts.. 

So the rest of my career was mostly as support staff for a wholesale energy company, buying and sell natural gas.  

MCNEELY When did you retire? 

RONNIE I retired in 2013.  The unfortunate thing is my wife became ill at the time of our retirements so we weren’t able to fulfill our dreams of travel. She first had breast cancer 35 years prior and a re-occurrance of a second diagnosis for last 10 years of her life and so she passed away in December 2022. 

MCNEELY I’m sorry 

RONNIE And so I’ve been basically on my own now since December 2022.

MCNEELY Are you traveling any; are you visiting family? 

RONNIE Yeah, I try to do a nice trip a couple of times per year.  I was able to do an Alaskan cruise last fall and I’ve got a plan to visit Nova Scotia in August of this year for ten days. It’s a guided tour of where our Acadian ancestors came from. It’s like an ancestral tour, so we’ll be able to see where the people from South Louisiana migrated from.

MCNEELY That’s wonderful.

RONNIE I’m seriously thinking of the next opportunity of a tour that’s put on by this same group in 2026 to go to France to the ancestral homeland there, that’s a guided tour also.  My two kids and their families occasionally invite me on trips such as spring break times and the such and I thoroughly enjoy their company. 

MCNEELY Ronnie, this is just incredible information and just a powerful story.  Is there anything else that you wanted to, to share that I haven’t asked about or anything you were thinking about that you wish I would ask? 

RONNIE No, I think I think we’ve covered as much as possible.  I think the amount of information that you’ve gotten out of me is a pretty remarkable. 

MCNEELY Anything else that you have for me that you want to talk about? 

RONNIE One statement that I’d like to mention in regards to the people in general of Lower Cameron Parish is how after the storm, the rebuilding process happened really quick and a lot of people were already back in their in their homes by year end.  I think that was an amazing accomplishment! 

MCNEELY That’s amazing and they’re saying now, there’s so much red tape with the government and FEMA, that it takes so long. 

But back then you just had very strong resilient people who got there and took care of things. They didn’t wait for anybody. They just did it. 

RONNIE You probably heard or encountered stories of how a lot of the people, including my Dad, got these 10 X10 wooden buildings with a canvas top; a tent of sorts that they lived in temporarily while they were rebuilding their homes.

MCNEELY I have photographs. I have actually two photographs of those. I learned about them from a couple of the people that I’ve talked to and that was fascinating. You had the four pieces, the four walls and the floor and the, five and the floor. There’s the floor. Yeah, five pieces. and then, and then the canvas top, exactly. Yes. 

RONNIE So actually my dad, once the house was completed, that “tent” became his saddle and tack shed. He added a tin roof and that building lasted until Rita took it. 

MCNEELY You learn how to use everything that you have to better your life and so that’s another example of how incredible, you know, your family, your parents and grandparents and, and everyone was from Cameron Parish back in the 50s; that is not possible now to do that quickly and so people are going to know about this for generations to come. So I’m thrilled that you’re sharing this and so wonderful. 

RONNIE I remember also that there was right at the four corners in Creole, across the canal, an Army Mess Tent set up. They served hot meals there. I remember going to eat there a couple of times when I’d go to Creole to see the progress on the house.

MCNEELY How was the food? I know they had those MREs, those meals ready to eat 

RONNIE They actually cooked things; it was pretty good. 

MCNEELY Okay maybe a little bit better than MRE’s, so, that’s amazing, that’s a great memory. So I’m going to have all that in there, I’m going to put all of this uh…transcribe it and, and make sure that everything from your story, before, during and after, are in there. So this has been wonderful talking to you, Ronnie, and meeting you and I hope to meet you one day face to face and if you’re ever in the area, please let me know.