Daisy “Dell” Sutherlin Jones: Delta Wings and Haughton Roots

November is Aviation History Month, and here in the History Center, we’re always looking for stories from World War II. But if “aviation history” and World War II invokes images of fighter planes, bombers and their pilots, here is another image to add: Domestic planes being used in the war effort, with women as part of their crews.

In 1943, Daisy Dell Sutherlin (later Jones), a young woman from Haughton, became an early “stewardess,” now known as flight attendant, for the North Louisiana-grown Delta Airlines. It was a brand-new career opening up for women in an industry just on the cusp of major growth. And for Daisy Dell, it was a starting point for big-city life and careers.

Delta, as Huff Daland Dusters, began in 1925 as a crop-dusting service, first in Macon, Georgia, then Monroe, Louisiana. It was bought by C.E. Woolman, who changed its name in 1928 to Delta Air Service for the Mississippi River Delta region it served. In 1929, Delta operated its first passenger flight from Dallas, Texas, to Jackson, Mississippi, with stops in Shreveport and Monroe. By 1940, it added Douglas DC-2 and DC-3 propellor planes that could hold 14 and 21 passengers respectively, and added Delta’s first flight attendants, then known as stewardesses. In 1941, the HQ moved from Monroe to Atlanta.

Delta’s addition of stewardesses to its flight crews came 10 years after the Boeing Air Transport company pioneered this position in 1930. A nurse from Iowa, Ellen Church, wanted to become an airline pilot but realized that wasn’t a career path open for a woman. So, she approached Boeing with the idea of placing nurses aboard airliners. She convinced the powers that be that the presence of women nurses would help relieve the traveling public’s fear of this new way to travel, flying.

Thus, women nurses as stewardesses replaced non-medical male stewards, and at Delta in 1940, flight attendants were required to be single women (never married) between 21 and 26 years old who were registered nurses. They also had to pass particular height, weight and appearance standards, and for over another decade, they had to be white. In 1952, Ruth Carol Taylor was the first African-American flight attendant in the United States, with Mohawk Airlines.

Fortunately for Dell Sutherlin Jones, who after her Haughton High School graduation, attended the two-year business secretary course at Louisiana Polytechnic Institute (Now Louisiana Tech), the registered nurse requirement was dropped during World War II due to the military’s demand for nurses. She left her job as a bookkeeper in Shreveport to head to Georgia to become a stewardess, and was on the job and in the air by January 1944, when the airline was still flying for the Air Transport Command, carrying materials and personnel for military purposes across domestic routes. The Air Transport Command, which was formed in June 1942, controlled most of the airliners (commercial passenger and cargo planes) that were drafted for the war effort, like Delta’s DC-3’s.

By the middle of 1944, the ASC was able to return planes to the airline that had been used for training. A July 7, 1944, article in the Shreveport Times, when Delta airlines came to Shreveport to recruit young women to be stewardesses, said, “The recent return to Delta by the government of three DC-3 planes has made possible the openings and M.E. Beard, local traffic manager for the line, said he was anxious that Shreveport be represented among the stewardess(es) who serve the line.” Miss Daisy Mae Sutherlin was named as the area’s current representative.

A jumbo-sized postcard featuring a Delta DC-3 in flight that Daisy Dell sent from Atlanta to her little sister Elyane in Haughton in November 1944, chastised “Layne” in fun about why she hasn’t written , since by then she’d have started elementary school, and she must be able to write a little. Daisy Dell inquired, “do you make any A’s?” She signed the letter, “Dell,” though local papers continued to call her the name she was known for from childhood, Daisy Mae.

      

Elayne, in an interview with her and her childhood friend, Dell Steadman, remembered they were practically giddy over Dell and her glamourous career, an image promoted by the airline and their fashionable summer and winter wool suits and matching jaunty hats. It was a special event when Dell’s flight stopped in Shreveport, where it was reported in the Bossier Banner-Progress on June 8, 1944, how Elayne and her mother and aunt drove to Shreveport to spend a few hours with “Miss Daisy Sutherlin, who is an airplane hostess on the Delta Line.”

Daisy was even featured in a magazine, pictured in her crisp uniform smiling between two pilots with the DC-3 towering behind them. Though the magazine was “Outdoors Georgia,” and the article promoted an appreciation of Georgia’s landscape and natural resources from the air, the writer emphasized the absolute comforts of air travel and stewardess Daisy Dell Sutherlin of Shreveport’s role in that. Though Daisy Dell had admitted to the article’s writer that she could count her trips thus far on one hand and had only recently completed her training, “she went about her business like a veteran. She tilted the easy chairs for passengers, answered a million questions, and served orange juice, delicious coffee and sweet buns in a tray. Just like breakfast in bed,” and enthused that when Daisy puts a pillow beneath your head, “you're at peace in a troubled world.”

When Dell left stewardess life, she studied at Johns Hopkins, and enjoyed big city life, working in Chicago and in 1951, New York City. The Planters Press Bossier City newspaper reported on Sept 11, 1952, that Dell, who by then worked for the pharmaceutical company Squibb in New York, “is flying here by plane on the 19th to visit with her family.” This visit was perhaps explained when news of her marriage license, filed along with Wesley J. A. Jones of Gary, Indiana, appeared in the Shreveport Journal on September 24th. Wesley Jones had been an aerial instructor in the Navy Air Corps. After their wedding later that month in Haughton, the couple first moved to Stamford, CT and continued to travel widely.

If you have World War II homefront family photos or stories to share (we will scan and return originals if that is your preference), please visit or contact us at the History Center. Also, don’t forget about our World War II’s Day coffee and discussion group on the second Tuesday of each month from 10:30 – noon. The next meeting is on November 12, with Rev. Sig Kunz speaking on his childhood experiences during World War II in Eastern Europe. The History Center (and World War Tuesday) is now located in the new Central Library building at 850 City Hall Drive, Bossier City, LA, across Beckett Street from the original History Center and the “old” Central Library. 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

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: 

• Photo of Dell Sutherlin, Delta flight attendant, between two pilots, with a Delta Douglas DC-3 plane behind them. From “Outdoors Georgia,” January, 1944.
• Front of a Delta Airlines DC-3 jumbo postcard C. 1940. Courtesy of the Delta Flight Museum. Gift of Cara Finger in honor of Dell Jones and Elayne Cornett.
• Back of postcard of Delta Airlines DC-3 jumbo postcard, from Dell Sutherlin to Elayne Sutherlin, November, 1944. Courtesy of the Delta Flight Museum. Gift of Cara Finger in honor of Dell Jones and Elayne Cornett.
• Elayne Sutherlin (Cornett) and her mother, Lucille McAnn Sutherlin C.1950. History Center photo courtesy of Elayne Cornett.

Article by: Pam Carlisle 

Representative Pierre Bossier: A Farewell to the First from the Fourth

Here is  another story of our parish’s namesake, General Pierre Evariste Jean Baptiste Bossier.  Our last jaunt into the past with General Bossier (8/28/2024), the story ended with his fabled death in 1844. With the Day of the Dead just around the corner, this story takes up from there. 

In 1842, General Pierre Evariste Bossier, a Jacksonian Democrat of Natchitoches, became the first legislator elected to represent Louisiana’s brand-new Fourth Congressional District. He began his term in March 4, 1843 and barely more than a year later he died in-office of an unspecified illness on April 24, 1844. Stories later circulated that Bossier’s death was a suicide, prompted by the angst perpetuated by a deadly duel with his political opponent (yet childhood friend) Gen. François Gaiennie. Political acrimony was truly at an all-time high,  but pre-modern medicine, in actual swampland, Bossier was the tenth member of the 28th US Congress to die just four months into the session. Tuberculosis is just one example of a common, yet potentially deadly,  illness that could have sounded Bossier’s death knell. 

Reports by legislative correspondents for newspapers around the country of the elaborate funeral service for General Bossier make it plain that Congress was practiced in holding grand state funerals. Also notable in these reports is that the congressional witnesses were not practiced in observing Catholic rites, and their commentary runs the gamut from curiosity to awe to xenophobic disgust.  

These reports began with the information that on April 25, 1844, Bossier’s fellow representative from Louisiana, Mr. Slidell, rose and announced the death of his colleague, Pierre Bossier, who died at his Washington “lodging” early that morning. Mr. Bossier had been confined to his room during the greater part of the session, and that he departed “peacefully,” according to the Hartford (CT) Courant. The Charleston (SC) Mercury reported that “Madame Bossier,” Bossier’s wife Mathilda Blair Bossier, was with him and “consoled him in his long affliction.” The Courant continued about General Bossier, “He was identified with the French population of the State of Louisiana where he was born [on March 22, 1797] and was of a type of people wholly devoted to our free institutions.” This paper also pointed out that Mr. Slidell referenced the brutal political division of the day by “express[ing] the hope that the occurrence serves to soften the asperities of debate and to put an end to all recrimination among members hereafter.”

The funeral was held the following day at noon. Members of the House of Representatives took their places and opened their session. At a quarter past 12’o’clock, the President of the Senate entered the Hall of the House, now Statuary Hall, in the US Capitol followed by the Senators in a body. The President of the Senate took a seat on the rostrum beside the Speaker of the House of the Representatives. Both wore white sashes, as did the officers of the House and members of the committee for the arrangements seated below them. Next came several Catholic priests in their bright vestments followed by the bier supporting the body of General Bossier, which was placed in front of the Speaker’s seat. The scent of incense filled the air. Also present were the President of the United States, John Tyler, and members of the Cabinet. 

Rev. Dr. James Ryder, Jesuit priest and president of the Georgetown College (now University) ascended the rostrum, and delivered his sermon without notes. Enthused a correspondent of the Journal of Commerce, “His [Rev. Ryder’s] exordium (beginning words) was beautiful, and as he went on to speak of the uncertainty of life and the fleeting nature of all worldly honors and advantages, every one within his hearing, felt the ground slipping from under him.” 

A reporter for the National Anit-Slavery Standard of New York stated similarly, in the May 9,1844, issue, that they found Fr. Ryder’s sermon impressive, though within a coarser context, the strident political discourse of the day. (The dramatic presidential nominating conventions held in the days and weeks following General Bossier’s 1844 death culminated in the closest presidential election in US history). The Standard said Rev. Ryder’s sermon “was an eloquent performance, but too much in the spirit of propaganda for such as occasion. One thing I was glad to hear, and that was a faithful rebuke for the House for the scandalous disorders and outrages committed so frequently on its floor.“ 

The Standard’s editorial comments also betrayed their anti-Catholic prejudices: “I was disgusted, as I have often been before by the mummeries of the Catholic rites, but I must do homage to the superior moral grandeur of this intrepid and truthful testimony.”  Regrettably, this prejudice was not limited to the page. As Fr. Ryder left the ceremonies, he was pelted with stones by anti-Catholic protestors, called the “Know-Nothings.”   

Following the service, a procession from both Houses and others conveyed the coffin to the Congressional burying ground (the Congressional Cemetery). There Pierre Evariste Bossier was interred but only temporarily, until reburial was possible in the Catholic Cemetery in Natchitoches. A cenotaph, a marker for a normally empty gravesite, memorializes him in the Congressional Cemetery as the Anglicized “Peter Bossier.” 

To learn more about the beginnings of Bossier Parish, come visit us in the History Center, which is now within the new Bossier Parish Libraries Central Complex at 850 City Hall Drive, Bossier City, LA (across Beckett Street from the original History Center and “old” Central Library). 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

For other fast 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: 

• Pierre Bossier. Digital copy in History Center collection. Original in private collection in Baton Rouge. NOTE: Portrait used previously for Pierre Bossier, by John James Audubon, on further research appears to be of Pierre’s cousin, Jean-Baptiste Bossier.
• The House of Representatives by Samuel F.B. Morse, C.1820s. In the collection of the National Gallery of Art. Painting depicts the “Old House Chamber,” which was used by the House of Representatives for their assemblies until 1857. It now houses the Hall of Statues in the U.S. Capitol.
• Father James A. Ryder, S. J. From the Georgetown University Library, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
• Text of Cenotaph for Representative Pierre Evariste Jean-Baptiste Bossier in the Congressional Cemetery, Washington, D.. His name has been Anglicized to Peter E. Bossier.

Article by: Pam Carlisle

Family History Month: “Generation to Generation”

In a house which becomes a home, one hands down and another takes up the heritage of mind and heart, laughter and tears, musings and deeds. Love, like a carefully loaded ship, crosses the gulf between the generations….So begins one of my favorite poems, “Generation to Generation” by French author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (best known for “the Little Prince”). I’m sharing it here because October is Family History Month.

Family History Month is celebrated and promoted to ensure that family stories are remembered for decades (and centuries) to come through research and education. It was not a coincidence that the Senate resolution to declare this commemorative month passed unanimously in 2001 just two and half weeks after the tragic and terrifying events of 9/11. The hope behind the act was that learning family history could work to unite communities, as well as provide context for and examples of, and resilience despite suffering and struggles. The U.S. Senate declared, “…Whereas as individuals learn about their ancestors who worked so hard and sacrificed so much, their commitment to honor their ancestors’ memory by doing good is increased; Whereas interest in our personal family history transcends all cultural and religious affiliations... Now, therefore, be it resolved, that the Senate designates the month of October 2001, as Family History Month…”

My grandparents Lillian and Algot Ekstrom of Worcester Massachusetts lovingly did not neglect to hand down their heritage, and my grandmother, especially, told stories that were remembered across generations – stories of childhood pranks on her beloved sisters or playmates, stories of fellow residents in her Massachusetts neighborhood’s trademark triplex (known as “triple decker”) houses, and of a beloved grammar school principal who took the students on nature walks, instilling in the lifelong city girl a lifelong love of nature and a famous green thumb.

Saint-Exupéry’s poem continues, Let us build memories in our children, lest they drag out joyless lives, lest they allow treasures to be lost because they have not been given the keys. We live, not by things, but by the meanings of things. It is needful to transmit the passwords from generation to generation.

I was incredibly fortunate my grandparents passed down those “passwords” and that I got to spend so much time in their home that was filled with meaningful things –stashed in an attic desk were love letters my grandmother wrote while she was in nursing school to her future husband of 69 years, my grandfather, designer dresses, hats and shoes of the 1920s, that passed down from the wealthy industrialist yet progressive family that employed my great grandmother, a young widow from Sweden who was raising 4 daughters, my mother’s and uncle’s prized story books, dolls and trucks, a gallery of my grandfather’s paintings (like many Swedes in his city, he worked in the steel and wire industry, but self-taught, he prolifically painted nature and wildlife) and the brightly-painted wooden horses (Dala horses) passed down through the family or bought as souvenirs from their trip of a lifetime to Sweden with their church.

History Center staff are eager help you research and record your family’s history, and we carefully preserve and make accessible the history of many Bossier Parish families. We also can share the inspiration and research skills we’ve gained from our own and our patrons’ family history searches, whether local or not. Our online resources span the globe. We are in the new Bossier Parish Libraries Central Complex at 850 City Hall Drive, Bossier City, LA (across Beckett Street from the original History Center and “old” Central Library). 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

For other fun facts, photos, and videos, be sure to follow us @BPLHistoryCenter on FB, @bplhistorycenter on TikTok

Images: 

• Lillian Carlson nursing school portrait 1930s
• Astrid, Ruth and Lillian Carlson, Bancroft Tower, Worcester, MA, 1922
• Dala horses. Image by Gustav.jg - Own work, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons
• History Center research area in the new Bossier Parish Central Complex Library

Article by: Pam Carlisle

School Tragedy in East Texas Prompts Response from Bossier Parish

Among the many headstones at Forest Park Cemetery in Shreveport, there stands one with the name of a young girl who perished 87 years ago in the worst school disaster in our nation’s history. Mary Priscilla Carney was only 12 that fateful afternoon in 1937 when an explosion reduced her school in New London, Texas to rubble. Bossier Parish responded, as did many communities, and began taking steps to ensure such a tragedy wouldn’t happen here.

Revenue flowing from the East Texas oil fields brought much-needed prosperity to New London in the 1930s. Located approximately 122 miles southeast of Dallas in Rusk County, the area grew as families moved there drawn by its wealth. Little expense was spared in building a school to accommodate the influx of children. An article from March 2007 in Texas Monthly magazine states that oil revenue “contributed to top-notch facilities … that included an elementary building, a gymnasium, and even a lighted football field. But the crown jewel belonged to children in fifth through eleventh grade (“senior year” at that time): the $300,000 two-story junior and senior high school, … fully equipped with a chemistry lab, an auditorium with a balcony, and an industrial-arts workshop.”

For Mary, who was in 7th grade, and approximately 500 of her fellow students, who occupied this nice, new crown jewel the afternoon of Thursday, March 18, 1937, the bell signaling the end of the school day was likely top of mind. It was supposed to sound at 3:30. What the students and their teachers didn’t know was that it would never sound. Its ringing would never be heard again.

Natural gas had been used to heat the campus since its construction. In January 1937, the school board voted to cancel its gas contract and save money by tapping into a nearby line of lower quality gas, sometimes referred to as a residue line, that was available for free. An article of May 1, 1995, on the Texas State Historical Association website states that tapping such a line “was a frequent money-saving practice for homes, schools and churches in the oil field.” In this instance, the practice proved deadly.

Within weeks of the change, ominous warning signs made themselves known. Headaches and burning eyes began afflicting students according to the online news site Texas Standard in an article from August 13 this year. But apparently no one suspected the culprit was a gas leak. At the time, natural gas had no odor additive, making leak detection difficult. As Mary and her classmates waited to go home that Thursday afternoon, the unthinkable happened.

Some accounts say it occurred at 3:05, others 3:17. A workshop teacher turned on an electric sander, unaware of the volatile gas fumes in the air. A spark flew from the switch, igniting the gas. The high school building exploded. The article on the TSHA website describes the blast: “Immediately the building seemed to lift in the air and then smashed to the ground. Walls collapsed. The roof fell in and buried its victims in a mass of brick, steel, and concrete debris.” A nightmare had come to New London.

Assistance arrived swiftly, as townspeople, oil field workers and many others who heard and felt the explosion rushed to the scene. Bossier Parish also offered help. An article in the March 25, 1937, edition of the Bossier Banner Progress newspaper details how businessman Arthur Ray Teague and E. W. Rice, chairman of the Bossier Red Cross chapter, delivered medical supplies. It also mentions Bossier City doctors John Victor Hendrick and William Mastin Scott arriving to render aid. The Planters Press newspaper of the same date describes Bossier firefighters arriving on scene to provide first aid and “anything else which would be of help.” Barksdale Field - as Barksdale Air Force Base was then known - sent planes with medical supplies, and according to item in the March 20, 1937, issue of the Miami Tribune of Miami, Florida, these planes flew over the disaster site and dipped their wings as a show of condolence.

The death toll estimate was approximately 300 killed, including about 16 teachers. Five of the young victims, including Mary, were brought to funeral homes in Shreveport. An investigation into the cause of the accident “concluded that gas had escaped from a faulty connection and accumulated beneath the building,” states the 1995 article on the TSHA website. This conclusion prompted Bossier officials to begin checking gas lines.

On April 9, 1937, The Plain Dealing Progress newspaper noted that the Bossier Parish School Board “ordered a thorough inspection of plumbing or gas fixtures in all school buildings of the parish burning natural gas.” Approximately two weeks prior, classes at Benton High School were cancelled for a day while repair work was done to gas lines, although in its April 1 edition, the Bossier Banner Progress states, “This work was not undertaken because of any fear of an explosion, but because the gas bills have been too high of late.”

Texas quickly passed legislation requiring something be added to natural gas to give it an odor, making leak detection much easier. Other cities and towns followed suit. Because of New London, the rotten egg smell signaling a gas leak became the industry standard. And lives have been saved because of it. Mary and her classmates and their teachers did not die in vain.

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/

Images: 

• Mary Priscilla Carney/courtesy Christie Marie Shepherd Findagrave.com
• New London monument to those who perished/courtesy Wiki Media Commons

Article by: Kevin Flowers

The First Catholic Church in Bossier Parish: Christ the King, Part 2

Did you know that Christ the King Catholic Church in Bossier Parish is home of the largest number of Spanish-speaking parishioners in the Diocese of Shreveport – which covers all of north Louisiana? September 15th through October 15th marks Hispanic Heritage Month, so let’s take an additional look at the history of Christ the King in downtown Bossier City, the first Catholic Church in Bossier Parish.

Christ the King was built in 1940 at the corner of Barksdale Blvd. and McCormick St. in old downtown Bossier City, a handsome white brick veneer church in the Spanish Mission style. In the church’s early history, this structure was its main expression of Spanish culture. In 1978, the growing church’s building was completely reconstructed in a modern, airy style with numerous windows and vast open space, leaving no hint of its previous Spanish style. Within the following decades though, Spanish language and culture could be seen and heard through the real structure of a church – its people.

In 1987, the Catholic Diocese of Shreveport began its Hispanic Ministry, an outreach program to Spanish-speaking Catholics in north Louisiana. “As Hispanic Catholics migrate into our area, we need to welcome them warmly as brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ,” asserted Bishop William B. Friend in the May 28, 1994, Shreveport Times. Within the ministry’s first five years, one Spanish Mass a month was conducted in south Shreveport at Saint Mary of the Pines and one was conducted in Bossier City at Christ the King. Father Rigoberto Betancurt, a pastor in Monroe, conducted both masses.

The coordinator for the diocese’s Hispanic Ministry, Elisa Milazzo, looked forward to the day when Spanish Masses could be held weekly, and had high hopes that the Shreveport-Bossier area would get its own Spanish-speaking priest. In July of 1999, Milazzo got her wish. Reverend Betancurt came to Shreveport fulltime to be chaplain over Hispanic ministries in the Diocese of Shreveport’s western deanery (geographic area). In the August 13, 1999, Shreveport Times, Milazzo affirmed that Betancurt’s arrival “has been an inspiration to all of us…You just can’t imagine the anticipation.”

The Times article also told the backstory of Father Rigo, as he likes to be called. Growing up in Pacora in northeast Colombia, Betancurt’s father died when he was only 7, but he never lost the memory of his father taking him and his 9 siblings to daily mass at five o’clock each morning. When Betancurt was in fifth grade and a group of priests visited his school to inspire the boys to train for priesthood, he signed up. His mother discouraged that path however, telling young Rigo he was needed to support the family. He became a teacher of music and Spanish, but ultimately could not ignore the call to priesthood. He trained in Medellín, Colombia, then Rome, Italy before returning to Colombia for his ordination in 1983.

Father Rigo’s first assignment was to a university in Brussels, Belgium, where he studied for a master’s degree in theology. Those studies were cut short when his mother became sick and he returned to Colombia. There he served in various churches and schools until he founded a church in the poorest section of the country’s second largest city, Medellín. He set his sights on helping members of the local drug gangs but the unspeakable violence of the time continued. When the director of Hispanic ministries for the Diocese of Alexandria (which once included what is now the Diocese of Shreveport) visited Betancurt in Colombia with an appeal to help fill the need for Hispanic services in northwest Louisiana, Betancurt made the complicated decision to leave his family and homeland. He did not know English, but set himself to the challenge of the move. He said, “I want Catholic Hispanics to know each other, who we are and be together for the Eucharist [communion]. I want people to reinforce their belonging to the diocese and to be in contact with pastors.”

The goal for the new Hispanic chaplaincy was to increase membership in individual parishes as well as strengthen the diocese. Like the priests in colonial and early Louisiana, who found in the scattered Catholic communities in the state’s remote areas accustomed to being unchurched, Betancurt found that many immigrants from Latin America had also faced a shortage of priests and parishes and were not accustomed to churchgoing. To reach these potential parishioners, Betancurt had many advantages. In addition to fluency in Spanish, he held valuable cultural knowledge, such as how holidays and services specifically to honor the Virgin Mary are central in the beliefs and practices of many Hispanic Catholics. However, perhaps Father Rigo’s best “secret weapon” was his certification as a soccer referee. He ran weekly pickup games at the LSU Shreveport soccer fields, where he could build relationships and invite the players to church.

In 2002, Father Betancurt, and the diocese’s Hispanic Ministry, were homebased at Christ the King. By 2003, Spanish services went from once a month to several a week, reported the April 28 Shreveport Times, and Father Rigo introduced Monday evening masses at Christ the King for service or hospitality industry workers who were not be able to attend church on the weekends. Christ the King also offered language classes both for English speakers to learn Spanish and Spanish speakers to learn English, and ministered to the spiritual and basic needs for migrant workers who sent their wages back to family in their economically-ravaged home countries.

Father Rigo believed that separate Spanish and Anglo masses and fellowship groups were what Hispanic parishioners typically needed upon arrival in a new home or homeland, but he said his ultimate goal is that the Anglo and Hispanic communities could eventually merge. Christ the King Parishioner Mary Morgan, who took the church’s Spanish classes and was welcomed as an honorary member of the church’s Hispanic community, echoed that sentiment. “Our prayer,” she said, “is that this becomes a bilingual parish. That is really what would be wonderful.”

The History Center always appreciates donations of photos and documents of Bossier Parish churches and other local institutions, and we are especially looking to add items from the Hispanic communities of Bossier Parish. If you have stories or photos or other items to donate or allow us to copy for our collections, be sure to visit or contact the History Center. We are in the new Bossier Parish Libraries Central Complex at 850 City Hall Drive, Bossier City, LA (across Beckett Street from the original History Center and “old” Central Library). 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

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:

• Father Rigoberto Betancurt. Photo courtesy of Christ the King Catholic Church, Bossier City.
• Father Rigoberto Betancurt at Christ the King Catholic Church, Bossier City, C. 2003 Photo courtesy of Christ the King Catholic Church.
• A celebration of the Virgin Mary at Christ the King Catholic Church, Bossier City, C. 2003 Photo courtesy of Christ the King Catholic Church.

Article by: Pam Carlisle