Bobby Landry at Landry Memorial in 1943

One of my Leveque cousins made a Facebook post yesterday about Landry Memorial High School in Lake Charles.  It inspired me to write my blog about Landry Memorial today, because that’s where my dad and his brothers went to school back in the day.  I remember looking through my dad’s old report cards when I was a kid and wondered about the Landry name associated with the school.  I never really bothered to ask about it back then.  My main concern were the bad grades that my dad made.  He explained them to me by saying that he only studied for enough to pass the class.  That really didn’t help explain it to me.

But later I found out the history of the school and the connection to the family.  When I was in high school, our family sang at Shakey’s Pizza Parlor in Lake Charles.  On Friday nights I remember there being many students from St. Louis High School that would come to listen to us sing and play for them.  Or maybe they just came for the pizza.  In college I went to St. Louis to participate in various meetings and retreats.

During that time I didn’t realize that St. Louis High had once been Landry Memorial.  I probably wasn’t paying attention when my dad likely told us that he went to school there.  To me, St. Louis was just another high school in Lake Charles.  But I found out differently later on.

My dad was an 8th grade student at Landry Memorial in 1943.  In the first photo, he is the center student in the middle row.  If you read the information in the second photo (Nov. 1943, p. 3) at the bottom of the first column, they describe my dad.  “Bobby is small but is full of fight.  I am sure that he will turn out to be as good as his brother was, who played center for the Tigers in 1941.”  The brother they were talking about was my Uncle Hubert, who was a few years older than my dad.  I don’t know if their prediction turned out accurately.  All I ever heard about were his musical undertakings.

But the first page of that old 1943 paper is interesting as well.  It talks about the death of Mrs. J. A. Landry.  She was born Wylie Eugenia Stanton in 1868.  My dad and his siblings called her “Aunt Wylie.”  She used to send her limousine to pick up my dad’s family on Sundays to bring them to church.  It left an impression.  She died on Nov. 1, 1943.

The school talked about her death because she had been instrumental in developing it.  In 1925 she purchased the old Baptist Orphanage on Seventh Street and had it remodeled to operate as a Catholic school for boys.  The school was dedicated as Landry Memorial High School on December 15, 1927, in memory of her late husband who had died in 1923.

In the school newspaper it mentions that J. A. Landry was associated with the Perkins-Miller Lumber Company.  That is true, but he did much more than that.  He was one of the main driving forces in getting modern utilities developed in Lake Charles.  He ran an ice company called J. A. Landry & Co.  Later he had the Lake Charles Ice, Light, and Water Works Company and Lake Charles Railway, Light and Waterworks Co.  He was a forward thinking entrepreneur.  I suppose that’s why his wife dedicated the school in his name.

He was born Joseph Alfred Landry, Jr. to Joseph Alfred Landry and Marie Aloysia Leveque.  He and my grandparents (Pee Paw and Mee Maw) almost have identical family trees.  There seemed to be quite a few Landry and Leveque connections back then.  They were all related to one another in various ways.  The closest connection was that Pee Paw was J. A. Landry’s half first cousin through their Leveque mothers.  

My great grandmother Celeste Leveque Landry was a half-sister to Aloysia Leveque Landry (their mothers were Landry sisters) and Aloysia’s full brother Justinian.  Justinian was the great grandfather of that Leveque cousin I mentioned at the beginning.

Like I said, he was talking about Landry Memorial High School, too.  It’s a family thing.