When History was in the Making in the History Center: A Hurricane Katrina Remembrance

It’s been twenty years, on August 29, since our neighbors on the Gulf Coast had to face the devastation of Hurricane Katrina (and soon after that, Hurricane Rita). Their lives were transformed, and for a while, life here at the Bossier Parish Library was transformed too. It never occurred to us the critical role a public library might play in disaster response, several hours away from the disaster, but we learned on our feet. Hundreds of evacuees poured into the Bossier Parish Central Library and History Center so they could use the computers to look at satellite photos of their homes, to try to contact friends and relatives whose whereabouts were unknown, to watch a New Orleans news channel via the Internet and to fill out their FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) applications.

The evacuees also came to the library as a place to spend time outside of a crowded shelter or relative’s house and as a place to let their kids be kids in our cheerful Children’s Department.

Our librarians did what librarians do – they provided lots of information, from local bus schedules to how to get food assistance - but they expanded their role well beyond that. They provided sympathetic ears and hugs and friendships. They collected books the displaced children could keep, so they wouldn’t have to worry about returning them in a completely unpredictable future time.

History Center staff noticed that history was being made all around us. We put all the tools necessary for doing oral history interviews, like tape recorders, blank tapes, consent forms and notebooks in a box where they were easily accessible. Every staff member was encouraged to record oral history interviews with hurricane evacuees as they came in, no appointment necessary.

We recorded stories of several evacuees who used the library in the days and weeks following the hurricanes, including Nell Charney, an elderly woman who lived by herself in a second-floor apartment in New Orleans’ midtown. She rode out the storm and spent days in her apartment, surrounded by water that reached to the ceiling of the apartment below, without power or any means of communication with the outside world. She was eventually rescued, she believed, by members of the Coast Guard who reached her by boat. They had no way to get her out of her apartment but by breaking her window and helping her though it, thus beginning her journey that eventually found her settling in Bossier City near relatives. She had dramatic memories of the rest of the evacuation:

And of course the boats were having to be very careful because they couldn’t see what was underneath the water, except you could see maybe just the tip of a lamppost … might be sticking up out of the water. So, they were all having to be very careful. We started toward the Broad Street Overpass…

After being dropped off at the overpass, Ms. Charney noted:

It’s a good thing I had on my hat, because that sun was beaming down, and I didn’t know if, when we’d ever get picked up, up there. The helicopters were flying around, but none came down. There had been…evidently, there had been crowds of people on this overpass earlier. Maybe even the day before; because there was all this debris, uh, strung, you know, out along. Lot of food, apples,…some good stuff. Like lanterns, there was a nice lantern there. People had, uh, been there with their possessions and they had just had to leave a lot of it when they got picked up.

In addition, we collected oral history interviews of library staff, recording and transcribing their stories of family members and other loved ones directly or indirectly affected by the monster storms, and of being “on the front lines” helping patrons who were hurricane survivors and evacuees. Former Children’s Services Director Lucille Marabella recalled that library staff “…genuinely showed how much we cared for these folks. It was something that I will never forget for many reasons, personal as well as professionally. Hopefully we can learn from it.” Former Reference Librarian Martha Matlock recalled in her interview that, “I learned a lot about myself during that period of time; how important it is to think that you are connected to about just anybody that walks in that door in some way. And, don’t let them ever go away empty handed…If you can’t give them what they need, send them some place where they can find it.”

The transcripts of these recordings are available for reading at the History Center, or they can be emailed to out of town family members or researchers. As stated by past History Center Director Ann Middleton, these interviews evoke strong memories of what it was like to be in Bossier as an evacuee, or as a provider of a safe haven for family members, or as a concerned public servant during a heart- wrenching time. We are able to share these thoughts and feelings through the generosity of the people who agreed to record an interview for posterity.

We are located at 7204 Hutchison Drive, Bossier City, LA and are open M-Th 9-8, Fri 9-6, and Sat 9-5. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org. For other local history facts, photos, and videos, be sure to follow us @BPLHistoryCenter on FB, @bplhistorycenter on TikTok, and check out our blog http://bpl-hc.blogspot.com/.

Images: 

• Nell Charney
• Lucille Marabella – BPL photo

Article by: Pam Carlisle

Sears Had Long History in Bossier City

Walking through Pierre Bossier Mall, there is no indication that its east end was home to Sears. Gone is the Sears sign that once hung above the mall entrance to the store, that entrance now blocked by a security gate. Beyond the gate, darkness inhabits the space once filled with everything from clothing and homewares to appliances and tools. Sears’ ending stands in stark contrast to its beginning in Bossier City sixty-nine years ago.

A simple, straight-to-the-point headline appeared in the November 30, 1956 edition of the Bossier Press newspaper, “Sears Opens Bossier Store.” The Heart of Bossier Shopping Center, at the intersection of Old Minden and Benton Roads, had been chosen as the store’s site. The accompanying article described the structure: “The 18,000 square foot building is in the same architectural model as the rest of the Big Chain Center of which it is a part. Modern in every detail, it includes a super service station, a customer catalog desk, and 18 complete departments.” Store advertisements featured products like 21-inch television sets for $148 that brought a “photo-sharp picture right into your living room” and Kenmore automatic washers for $188 that were “like having 2 washers in 1 with one speed for regular fabrics and a slower speed for delicate fabrics.”

That the word modern was applied to the store was no surprise. According to the Bossier Press article, the store was designed by the firm founded by noted modernist architect William B. Wiener. He and his half-brother Samuel were responsible for bringing the European Modernist style of design to Shreveport and Bossier. The article called the store “an important new milestone in the commercial history of Bossier City.” Hired to manage this milestone was Texas native Forest Vaughn, who, according to the same Bossier Press article, had previously worked as an assistant manager for Sears in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Sears began in 1892 as a mail-order watch and jewelry business founded by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck in Chicago. The business quickly grew, thanks in no small part to its ever-expanding catalog. In 1933, the first Christmas Wish Book was published. An article from July 25, 2017 in Smithsonian Magazine states, “By the early 20th century, Sears was already a household name across the United States, one that represented rural thrift and industry as well as material abundance and consumer pleasures.” Across the country, Sears stores began springing up. According to the magazine article, more than 700 stores were in operation in the U.S. by the mid-1950s.

The Bossier store moved into a larger building in the Heart of Bossier in 1966 with nearly 50,000 square feet of floor space and another 7,700 square feet for an automotive service center. Bossier newspaper accounts of the move quoted Forest Vaughn stating the store’s size reflected the company’s confidence in Bossier’s continued growth. “We feel sure that our Bossier City friends, on visiting the new store, will agree with our slogan, ‘Sears has everything’,” he said. The store served customers at that location for the next 16 years until moving into Pierre Bossier Mall in March 1982.

With much fanfare, Sears was the first store to open in the mall. A ribbon cutting was held and grand opening sales were offered. For 36 years, Sears was an anchor store for the mall. But as Sears corporate fortunes declined, so too did those of the Bossier store and many Sears locations around the country. By the summer of 2018, local newspapers were carrying advertisements for the Bossier and Shreveport

Sears stores, proclaiming in bold type, “Store Closing,” “Everything Priced to Sell.” By September that year, the stores were history. The changing landscape of how we purchase goods and services was a factor in the demise of this former icon of American business. Oh, to be a kid again looking at the toys in the Christmas Wish Book one more time.

If you have any photos or other information relating to the history of Bossier City or Bossier Parish, the History Center may be interested in adding the materials to its research collection by donation or by scanning them and returning the originals. Call or visit us to learn more. We are open M-Th 9-8, Fri 9-6, and Sat 9-5. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org. We can also be found online at https://www.facebook.com/BPLHistoryCenter/ and http://bpl-hc.blogspot.com/

Images: 

•  Former entrance to Sears in Pierre Bossier Mall/Kevin Flowers
• Advertisement for new Sears location in Bossier/Bossier Press, Nov. 30, 1956

Article by: Kevin Flowers

Bossier West of the Red

When looking at the bounds of Bossier Parish, one would be forgiven for believing that the western bank of the Red River was entirely Caddo Parish, and the eastern bank was entirely Bossier Parish. One would also be quite wrong. Several portions of the traditional Caddo Parish side of the river are in fact Bossier Parish, leading to several instances of disconnected parish land. The reason for all this is due to the language used on the founding of Bossier Parish, as well as physical geographical changes over the past 182 years.

When the borders of Bossier Parish were first drawn, the area that would become Bossier was still Claiborne Parish (which in turn had once been a portion of the greater Natchitoches Parish). The official wording of the act states; “That all that portion or tract of Country in the Parish of Claiborne bordering on Red River and bounded as follows to wit.” The document then goes into detail about official bounds, following Loggy Bayou through Lake Bistineau, then following Bayou Dorcheat up to the Arkansas state line before turning back west and following the state line until meeting the Red River. The observant might notice that much of the above description does not match the current eastern bounds of Bossier Parish. This is due to Webster, and how it was founded out of three separate Parishes: Bossier, Claiborne, and Bienville. On the western bound, it is important to remember, however, that the river has shifted since the 1843 founding, as well as the fact that Caddo Parish was founded before either Bossier or Claiborne Parish. With Caddo Parish’s eastern bound set as the Red River, this created a situation where the bounds for Bossier Parish needed to be drawn in relation to Caddo Parish as well, not just the geographical bounds of the Red River.

First, there is Wright Island, one of the smaller portions of Bossier Parish across the Red River. The residential area has been annexed into the Shreveport municipal area, receiving things like fire, police, and sewage from Shreveport, while things like education are carried out by Bossier Parish. Indeed, according to the August 5th, 1961, edition of the Shreveport Journal, Caddo Parish School Board was approached about accepting the students of Wright Island, but the deal never came to fruition, seemingly due to another orphaned part of Bossier Parish, the Free State Park area. To the east, the Coates Bluff Apartments are the largest section of residential buildings on Wright Island, accompanied by a small number of homes to the west. Another, the Champion Lake area closest to the Red River, south of Anderson Island and Westgate Bridge, is also included on the Bossier side of the boundary line. This includes things like the YMCA, the Loyola Athletic Complex, and the Champion Lake Apartments, to name a few. Due to both areas being within Bossier Parish, as well as the East 70th Street Bridge (Jimmie Davis Bridge) area, most of southern Clyde Fant Memorial Parkway lies within Bossier Parish, not Caddo.

The other large portion of Bossier Parish still on the Caddo side of the Red River lies north of Downtown Shreveport, known as the Free State Industrial Park. Formerly the Free State Plantation, the Free State Industrial Park is dominated by two major features, the aptly named industrial park, and the Shreveport Downtown Airport. There are a few homes within the area as well, though residential homes are in the minority of properties in the Free State Park area. One final, and personally unexpected, region of disconnected Bossier Parish sits in downtown Shreveport. The Shreveport Aquarium, part of Riverview Hall, and the downtown fountains are all part of Bossier Parish. Thanks to the causes natural and man-made, the Red River has been shifted to its current position. Perhaps it is no surprise, therefore, that some portions of Bossier have become disconnected from the greater whole.

If you have any photos or other information relating to the history of Bossier City or Bossier Parish, the History Center may be interested in adding the materials to its research collection by donation or by scanning them and returning the originals. Call or visit us to learn more. We are open M-Th 9-8, Fri 9-6, and Sat 9-5. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org. We can also be found online at https://www.facebook.com/BPLHistoryCenter/ and http://bpl-hc.blogspot.com/

Image: Map of Bossier Parish west of Red River (BPL HC - 1997.086.015)

Article by: Jonah Daigle

Pearce O’Neal: Making it Big in the Big Easy

It happens often enough to be a cliché; small town papers love a good “local boy [or gal] makes good” story. The “Bossier Banner Progress” was no exception. The editor especially liked the story of his former schoolmate, William “Pearce” O’Neal. O’Neal was born in Bellevue and became an international business and banking leader in New Orleans. The “Banner Progress” featured him in two stories.

One story was in May of 1924 when the editor was perusing “The Southern Banker,” a periodical out of Atlanta, Georgia, an illustration of a familiar face and this accompanying text caught his attention:

“Mr. O’Neal, who went to New Orleans twenty-eight years ago with 75 cents in his pocket has had a deep and thorough training in business. He stuck with that firm and step by step started as a sample wrapper [sending out sample goods in specially imprinted wrappers was important for advertising in those days] in a wholesale grocery company. Step by step he moved up the ranks to vice president of the company.”

“The Southern Banker” reported on O’Neal in 1928 when he was named president of the Louisiana Bankers Association. The editor of the Banner also wrote about it in June of that year, and had not forgotten about the 75 cents in Mr. O’Neal’s pocket:

“Mr. O’Neal was born and reared at old Bellevue, removed with the members of his father’s family from that place to Benton about the time the town became the parish seat and his employment during the days of his youth, when not a student in the home schools, was to clerk in his father’s general merchandise store, both here [in Benton] and in Bellevue. He left Benton for New Orleans twenty-eight years ago, and we happen to know that he reached that city with only 75 cents in change in his pocket—and fewer changes of underwear in his weather-beaten suitcase. But he had the determination to succeed—bulldog tenacity—and did. Being stranded and in a city, among strangers, did not daunt him in the least, as his rapid rise in commercial life reflects.”

There is no doubt Mr. O’Neal became very successful – being named president of the Louisiana Bankers Association was about the highest professional honor in the state -- and the record shows his climb was rapid. Just how ‘alone’ and broke he was when he started his career in New Orleans is difficult to tell. He certainly didn’t start with zero experience in moving merchandise. He had worked at his family’s stores in Benton and Bellevue. In truth, it was not uncommon for ambitious peddlers or small-town general merchants to move to large cities like New Orleans, where they had contacts with wholesalers, and join those firms themselves.

In 1900, W.P. O’Neal was listed on the U.S. Census as living in Bellevue, and by the Banner’s estimation that same year is when he moved to Benton. Just a few years later, in the “World’s Fair Bulletin” of the illustrious 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exhibition in St. Louis, Missouri, he was featured in an article about the country of Brazil’s Coffee Exhibit as a “member of a well-known coffee importing house in New Orleans.” O’Neal reported that three years prior he’d travelled to Brazil, spending hundreds of dollars and months of time visiting various coffee plantations, and urged merchants throughout the country to make the shorter trip to the World’s Fair for an almost equally edifying experience.

Later he joined Standard Rice Milling Company and remained there for eight years as vice president and general manager. He then joined a new bank, Marine Bank of New Orleans, and was put in charge of business departments as one of its first stockholders and directors. His responsibilities kept increasing until elected vice president. He served on the Inland Waterways Commission and assisted with getting local communities desperately-needed flood relief during the unprecedented flooding along the Mississippi River from late summer 1926 and 1927.

Pearce O’Neal also had luck on his side. He served as president of the Louisiana Bankers Association for the year 1928-29 in a "bull market." Imagine the year his successor P.C. Willis of Shreveport must have had for 1929-1930 when the stock market crashed! Ironically, stories like O'Neal's, of rural Americans coming to the big city with hopes of a more prosperous life in the rising industrial sector, are often cited as one factor in the crash. While American cities prospered, major migration from rural areas and the resulting neglect of US agriculture created financial hopelessness among American farmers and instability for the US economy.

William Pearce O’Neal had a wife named Carrie and two children, W.P. O’Neal, Jr. and Pattye Caroline Brown. He passed away in 1940. We have very little information on his wife Carrie, who was from Tennessee, and we currently have no pictures of him. If you have any, we would love to make copies of them for our collection! If your family has any local business stories to tell or photos to share, please visit us at the Bossier Parish Libraries History Center and let us know. We are located at 2206 Beckett St, Bossier City, LA and are open M-Th 9-8, Fri 9-6, and Sat 9-5. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org

For other fun facts, photos, and videos, be sure to follow us @BPLHistoryCenter on FB, @bplhistorycenter on TikTok, and check out our blog http://bpl-hc.blogspot.com/.

Images: 

• Louisiana State Building at the 1904 World’s Fair, from “Sights, Scenes and Wonders at the World's Fair; Official Book of Views of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition of the St. Louis, Official Photographic Company C1904. From the Library of Congress (loc.gov).
• Former O'Neal Store at Bellevue – appears to be after the Parish seat had been moved from Bellevue to Benton. Bossier Parish Libraries History Center photo, C1910.

Article by: Pam Carlisle

Unusual Newspaper Headline Recalls UFO Sighting in Bossier

As I research various topics to write about for the History Center’s weekly column, I sometimes come across interesting, unexpected information from Bossier’s past that captures my attention. Such is the case with an old newspaper headline and story that I found recently concerning supposedly strange objects spotted over Barksdale Air Force Base. What were those lights seen in the night sky?

In June 1947, a pilot named Kenneth Arnold, who was flying alone from Washington state to an air show in Oregon, helped launch the UFO (unidentified flying object) craze after describing for reporters nine shiny objects he claimed to have seen moving in formation near Mt. Rainer at speeds then unachievable by known aircraft. From that encounter and its subsequent publicity, the term “flying saucier” became a widely-used term.

The idea of aliens from other worlds coming to Earth became a central theme of many science fiction movies of the 1950s. Films like “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” “The War of the Worlds” and, one of my personal favorites, “The Thing From Another World” kept theater audiences on the edge of their seats. An honorable mention goes to “Plan 9 From Outer Space.” It’s definitely in the so-bad-it’s-good category.

In 1952, the UFO phenomena invaded Bossier City. A headline in the Bossier City Planter’s Press of August 28 that year proclaims, “Sky Objects Over Barksdale Not Balloons, Weather Records Prove!” The accompanying article details how a local resident had seen a bright light over the air base each night for three weeks that blinked and “seemed to dart about in a strange manner.” He said it had always appeared between 8:25 and 8:45. The resident then invited a reporter from the newspaper to join him and two other observers to try and view the light. They weren’t disappointed.

Of the experience, the reporter wrote, “As the minutes dragged on and nothing appeared, the skepticism returned. But, at 8:44, a bright light … seemed to come from the vicinity of the West Gate … the light continued low over the base for several minutes … There was no noise.” He states that the light blinked several times and then ascended until no longer visible.

While discussing what they’d seen, the group noticed another light appear approximately 45 minutes later. “It followed about the same course, blinking occasionally as it rose in the sky,” the reporter wrote. Checking with officials at Barksdale revealed that a weather balloon had been released at exactly 9 p.m., but no others before or after that time. And according to the Planters Press article, those officials said that weather balloons only carried dim, non-blinking lights.

The reporter concluded by stating that he was unsure exactly what he and the others had witnessed. “Flying saucer? I don’t know. I only checked the weather balloon theory, and it did not add up,” he wrote.

Perhaps the Air Force itself could have helped. In March 1952, Project Blue Book was initiated by the Air Force to investigate UFOs, and according to a National Archives article from December 2019 titled “Saucers Over Washington: The History of Project Blue Book,” there was no shortage of cases to scrutinize. “Civilians made tens of thousands of reports to Project Blue Book personnel claiming to have seen a UFO,” the article states.

I’m unsure how often Barksdale Air Force Base, local law enforcement or local media are contacted about unusual sights in the sky, but perhaps heeding the words of the character Scotty, a reporter in “The Thing From Another World,” might be advisable. As the movie ends, he offers a warning: “Watch the skies, everywhere. Keep looking. Keep watching the skies.”

If you have any information or items relating to the history of Bossier Parish, the History Center may be interested in adding the materials to its research collection by donation or by scanning them and returning the originals. Call or visit us to learn more. We are open M-Th 9-8, Fri 9-6, and Sat 9-5. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org. We can also be found online at https://www.facebook.com/BPLHistoryCenter/ and http://bpl-hc.blogspot.com/

Images: 

• The War of the Worlds movie poster, 1953/courtesy Wikimedia Commons
• Bossier City Planters Press headline, August 28, 1952/newspapers.com

Article by: Kevin Flowers