BY KEVIN CHIRI, Publisher

LAPLACE — The tough work ethic of yesterday, that seems to elude so many of today’s kids, was something that was never lost on St. John Parish President Nickie Monica.

For that matter, Monica quietly makes it clear that he is proud of a work ethic he learned from a young age, from an “old school” father who showed tough love by example, rather than words.

“My father never told me he loved me until two days before he died,” Monica said. “That was when he told me he loved me, and that I had been a good boy.”

Monica admits it was a tearful time that day with his father, Joe Monica, who passed away within 48 hours after living a hard-working life for 73 years.

So listening to Monica now, living a life filled with working long hours and volunteering for a multitude of public service venues, it might be easy to psycho-analyze the popular local official. Is he doing it all to compensate for the way he was raised? Has he always pushed himself to the limit to prove something to his father?

Monica says that is the furthest thing from the truth.

Instead of the “tough love” shown to him and his seven siblings by his father, Monica said he simply wants to be a father who spends lots of time with his children.

“I still kiss my 17-year-old son every day, and we laugh about it,” he said. “I’ll never have any regrets about not spending enough time with my children.”

He has five children with his wife of 23 years who he married as a high school sweetheart. Their home life seems much the contradiction to the way he was raised.

But rather than be critical of the hard work ethic his father gave him by example, and the “tough love” he got from his dad, Monica believes the core of who he is came from his upbringing and father’s example.

“I admired my dad for the hard work he did,” Monica said. “There wasn’t a lot of hugging and kissing in my home. But I attribute who I am today, and what I have achieved, to the background my dad gave me.”

For that matter, Monica is quick to agree that things in his home are very different from the days he grew up. But he seems to embrace the hard-working home he grew up in, as opposed to some who might have seen it as a negative.

Monica had two brothers and five sisters in the Garyville home, where his dad leased a 150-acre piece of land that he farmed, besides operating Monica’s Sportsman’s Club in Reserve for 30 years.

Monica and his siblings learned from a very young age that they would be working to help the family.

“I was driving a tractor when I was six years old,” he said. “I couldn’t even reach the clutch, but I could steer it in a straight line. Then my dad had me driving a car when I was 13. I hope I don’t get in trouble for saying that now, but back then it was just the way it was in the country around here.”

His entire life at home is remembered as a time of hard work, something that Monica just never minded.

“The best thing I remember about growing up was when I hauled the sugar cane to the mill. I loved doing it since it seemed like I was sort of free to go off on my own,” he said. “But even then, I was doing that along with working my first job at Mississippi Valley Equipment Company, and I would get so tired that I would keep a cooler of ice water in the truck, and slap it on my face when I would get sleepy.”

Not only did the kids all work in the sugar cane business, but Monica was running his dad’s bar when he was in the 11th grade, hardly old enough to drink, much less serve liquor.

“How many kids were serving drinks to their high school principal?” he asked. “I did it every Thursday night when they came in after the parent-teacher meetings.”

Coming out of high school at Riverside Academy, Monica was a standout football player and seemed destined for a college scholarship until an injury his senior year ended all that. He went on to his first job at the equipment company, before landing the job everyone was seeking at Marathon-Ashland Oil Company in Garyville.

“That was the job that everyone wanted. It was good pay and benefits,” he said.

Monica says he always remembered his desire to work hard, and to help others. He joined the Garyville Fire Department at age 18, then by the age of 23 was named the chief, to make him the youngest fire chief in the state of Louisiana.

Meanwhile, a young lady named Dawn Oubre had caught his eye in high school, and they began dating throughout school until marrying when he was 22 and she was 19.

“I remember seeing her every day in algebra class, and I started asking her for a pencil every day. She later told me that after I began to ask for the pencil, she made sure she always had a sharp one for me so I would keep seeing her,” he laughed.

While at Marathon, he joined the Volunteer Emergency Response Team (VERT) and stayed working there for 20 years, the final three as a supervisor. But in 1996 an opening came up on the St. John Parish Council, and at the urging of people in the community, decided to run.

“I always wanted to help people, that’s just how I’ve always been,” he said. “And I looked at government as a better way to do that. No one in my family had ever been in politics, but I always wanted to get involved.”

He won over “Pappy” Terry, getting 63 percent of the vote, and remained in that position until taking his shot at parish president in the 2000 election. Again he won, beating three others for the two-term seat. Earlier this year, he was re-elected and is now starting what will be his final four-year term, due to term limits. He is especially proud of the fact that he has climbed to the top of parish government, all as a young man who worked hard and did it all without a college education.

But Monica makes it clear that as much as he lives the position of parish president, his family will always be the thing that comes first.

His five children are Ryan, age 17; Lauren, age 15; Catherine, age 12; Erin, age 7; and Shannon, age 3.

“I’ll be working for a lot more years,” he said jokingly.

And he considers himself to be a good dad, even when he was working 12-hour shifts at Marathon, and even these days when he puts in long hours as parish president.

“My kids understand my responsibilities, but I always spend lots of time with them. We have a big, vacant lot where we play and I try to always be at the functions of things my kids are involved with.”

He admits that his father only made it to one football game his entire high school career, something he has made a point to change.

“I know that my father was very different than the way I am,” he said. “But I really still appreciate who my father was. He affected a lot of lives in a positive way through all the people he knew from the bar. To this day, people talk to me about my dad. Things were just different a generation ago when it came to relationships between parents and kids.

“I know that I would have no regrets about how I have given time to my kids if I died tomorrow. And that’s the reason I make sure to live this way. We just don’t know what the next day will bring,” he said.

It was his wife who gave Monica the final OK to make the parish president run, after being staunchly against it in his early years of governmental life.

“The day I was sworn in as parish councilman, two guys asked me if I would run for parish president. I was flattered, but when I told Dawn, she didn’t just say ‘no,’ she said ‘hell, no.'” he recalled.

But years later as they were leaving church one day, he was again approached, all in front of his wife.

“That night she told me she wanted me to run,” he said. “To get her blessing was the only way I would have done it. The next day I started working for it.”

Monica has seen sewage, water, drainage and jobs as the priorities in his position from day one. And he feels like he has made a big impact in St. John in his first term.

“From the beginning I wanted to help change the image from a backwoods, country kind of image to a more progressive image. I think we have done that and we can see steady growth continuing. When you see stores like Home Depot and Super Wal-Mart coming here, you know they are expecting growth,” he remarked.

Monica has made trips to Washington that have brought home millions of dollars in federal funds for St. John Parish, and he is especially proud of the $18 million veterans retirement home that has been approved for the parish.

“That will bring 200 jobs and an $8 million annual impact to his area,” he said about the facility that will soon begin construction in the western end of the parish.

He is currently working to bring Bollinger Shipyard, with 2,000 jobs to the River Parish Region, along with Berg Pipe & Steel, which may locate here with 200 jobs.

Monica says that adding a full-time economic development director to the staff, and upgrading computers, Inter1net and e-mail capabilities throughout parish government, have also been a big step forward.

“I think the only real critics I have are the ones who want something done, and we can’t do it for them,” he said. “My goal is to kill people with kindness, and only hold a grudge for three seconds. The most miserable people in the world are the ones who hold grudges.”

What will he do in just over three years when his final term as parish president expires?

“I can’t retire,” he said. “I’ve got too many kids still growing up. I have considered a run at Congress, or a state seat, but I’ll have to wait and see what is available at the time. Or I might end up in the private sector somewhere. But somehow, I think I’ll have some kind of hand in government.”

“I just love people and trying to help them. That’s what I plan on continuing to do,” he added.