Our Erie the Student

Long before my dear sweet Mee Maw (Germaine Erie Patureau Landry) taught me and my siblings how to play Solitaire – even before she taught her own children how to play Canasta and Pinochle, she was just little ol’ Erie, student at SLI. According to this old school newspaper, she started school there in 1912 after graduating high school from Crescent, Louisiana.

I think this picture titled “Fourth Year Class” was taken in 1914 at the beginning of her senior year at SLI. The accompanying school newspaper cover shows the graduating class of 1915 with Erie on the front row. Neither one of the photos is very clear. They are school newspaper photos after all and I think it’s amazing that they have survived in any form all of these years later. I like this photo because she looks so stylish with her black skirt and lace-up boots. (In the front on the right.)

I remember that when I was younger, I thought my Mee Maw was from Lafayette. Now I think of her a being from Plaquemine. Most of her childhood was spent in Crescent, which is a suburb of Plaquemine. Her mother died in 1909 when Erie was just 14 years old. Her mother’s mother Belite (Marie Amelie Bujol Landry Babin, known as Grandma Babin to some) moved to Lafayette by 1910. Her father Max (Vincent Maximilian Patureau) stayed in Crescent until 1912, which was around the time Erie finished high school. He set up practice in Lafayette in October of 1911 and brought the children over in April of 1912.

So once she finished high school, her home was Lafayette for about ten years. Even after she got married in 1921 and moved to Lake Charles to live, her father lived in Lafayette for several more years. When I was a kid I didn’t consider all of these details. I wish I had asked a bit more back then, but we were too busy playing games and singing songs. So it’s a good thing these articles were saved that have a few photos and some reminiscences of young Erie.

The front page photo has Erie second from the right on the front row. (See here for a better version of the photo.) It looks like the photo must have been taken in the cooler time because of the heavier clothes. This photo has more people in it than the previous one, so that is a little confusing for me. Usually classes get smaller as time goes on with people dropping out or moving away.

This front pages starts introducing members of the class and telling what each individual accomplished during the years. Mee Maw is not mentioned there.

The second pages gives a description of the paper and its staff. It also has a dedication. Someone must have asked the class what they wanted to will to the younger class mates. It’s called “LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF THE SENIOR CLASS.” Very dramatic. Check out number 19: I, Erie Patureau, do will and bequeath my good times to Pierre Hernandez.

My favorite part of the pages is the article on the right side called “HISTORY OF THE CLASS OF ’15.” (That’s 1915 in case you were unsure.) It mentions many of the class members, but what they write about Mee Maw is sweet – “The following January after all dangers of finals was over Erie showed up. Modest and retiring, she was hard to make friends with, but we were determined and now she’s ours.” I like that.

Page 3 continues with introductions to the class. There at the bottom of the first column is our Germaine Erie Patureau. That’s where I learned that she entered S. L. I. I. from Crescent Graded School in 1912. It doesn’t list any accomplishments at all. Not one. I wonder why that is? What it does have is a quote in Latin: “Dulce est recipere in loco.” According to Google translate, that means “Sweet is back in place.” That makes no sense.

I tried to reword it, but nothing really made sense. Put sweet back in its place? Give sweetness back in place? Dude? Sweet! (What does mine say?) So I searched again and found a famous Latin quote – “Dulce est desipere in loco.” That means, “It is sweet on occasion to play the fool” or “It is pleasant to be frivolous at the appropriate time.” I wonder if that is a quote that she liked, or was it said to her?

Page 4 has a letter that is a study in alternative reality. Someone wrote a letter as though it were years later and talks about the old classmates he runs into on his travels. There is a mention of our Erie in it. In that alternate reality, she went to Europe as a Red Cross nurse helping in a hospital.

While that would have been a grand and noble thing to do, I do prefer the reality of her staying here in the States and becoming my grandmother. Of course, I am biased.