History book tells great story of 286 years for River Region parish

By BEN LUNDIN

Staff Reporter

LAPLACE – From its original hub on the Westbank, to Garyville, Reserve and now LaPlace, St. John the Baptist’s Parish’s rich 286 years of history are a lesson in America’s growth, complete with turmoil, heroes and pioneers.

A new book collects these moments in an expansive 200-page collection of pictures and stories to remind readers of the positive and forgotten moments that shaped our constantly evolving parish.

Written by Darroch Watson and lifelong St. John Parish resident and School Board Director Gerald Keller and compiled by Lisa Keller-Watson, &#8220Precious Gems and Faded Memories: A Pictorial History of St. John the Baptist Parish,” is a resurrection of dying history complete with hundreds of pictures old and new.

It’s the first attempt since John Millet’s 1939 book &#8220The History of St. John Parish” to detail the people and events that created St. John Parish, and in those 57 years new legends have left their mark.

&#8220What I wanted to do was to maintain a lot of the history,” Keller said. &#8220I wanted to keep history as it was and not let it die out.”

But with St. John Parish’s diverse history, the undertaking by Keller, Keller-Watson and Watson didn’t come easy.

&#8220We had to weed out so much material,” Keller said. &#8220When we initially wrote the book we had 260 pages of text and the book had to be cut down to 200 pages. Once we put the pictures in we found ourselves with 216 pages so we had to cut down 16 more pages. We have so much that we’ll probably do some smaller stuff later on. We did very little on religion, very little on politics and there’s still a lot in education, business and industry we didn’t address. We had to filter out some good stuff. We could’ve written a 600-page book.”

The St. John Parish administration commissioned 192 pages of the book, but Keller needed to put in his own money to bring the book up to its 200 pages. He hopes the material cut from the book can someday be compiled into mini-books based on specific subjects, such as religion or business.

Pictures from all eras needed to be tracked down and most of the older photographs required retouching. Some were too damaged to be restored.

&#8220We made phone calls, bought some pictures, made contact with the Louisiana State Museum and Louisiana State Museum of Natural Science and as we began to do our work it opened up new pictures,” Keller said. &#8220We bought some, people lent us pictures, gave us pictures and we scanned some. We probably collected about 1400 pictures in the process and had to weed them out.”

Darroch and Keller each wrote nearly 50% of the book, and contributor Wilhemina Armour helped research and compose sections on St. John Parish’s African American history. Keller hopes one day the text will be used as a supplemental textbook for a nine-week Louisiana Studies session in St. John Parish schools.

250 copies of the book have already sold, and 400 are being manufactured as of press time. People interested in a copy of the book can obtain it for $30 by calling St. John Economic Development Coordinator Julia Remondet at 985-652-9569.