My mom lives with us now. Her mind is in and out these days. Sometimes she completely understands what Elizabeth and I are doing with the magazine, and other times she just smiles and tells us how proud she is.
Mom was in the newspaper business for many years herself. She sold advertising for The Lafayette Advertiser and later worked with several magazines throughout Acadiana. So advertising has always been part of our family.
While I was working on this issue, she passed by my office and stopped.
“Are you working on ads?” she asked.
I told her I was.
“I remember when you would play ‘ad layout’ instead of paper dolls when you were a little girl,” she said, and then went on to her room.
She was right.
I remember going to the newspaper office with my Dad on Sunday afternoons. The building would be empty except for the two of us. He would sit at his desk paying bills for hours, and I would entertain myself playing “ad layout.”
Back then, the walls were covered with “cuts,” little pieces of clip art organized by subject. If my pretend ad needed a dog, I would find DOG on the wall and have 20 different dogs to choose from. I would pick one, run it through the wax machine and stick it onto my taped-off paper. I would arrange everything until I thought it looked just right.
I didn’t know it then, but I was practicing for the rest of my life.
Eventually, somebody actually started paying me to play “ad layout,” and that’s when I really started learning Livingston Parish.
I would design an ad for a business I had never heard of, learn what they did and where they were located, and then pass their sign a few days later and think, “I know them!”
Over the years, I really did begin to know them.
I’ve watched family businesses pass from one generation to the next. I’ve watched people take a chance, open a storefront and build something from nothing. I’ve watched Livingston Parish grow from a place where I sometimes felt like an outsider into a community that very much feels like home.
When I was Elizabeth’s age, I sometimes felt out of place because I hadn’t gone to high school here. I didn’t know many people my age and mostly spent my time with the older people I worked with. But somewhere along the way, this parish became mine too.
I believe Hurricane Katrina changed Livingston Parish forever. Families came here looking for higher ground and a place to begin again. Neighborhoods grew, businesses followed and Livingston Parish changed. Then came the flood of 2016, when so many of those same businesses were underwater alongside our homes. Once again, people rebuilt.
That’s the Livingston Parish I’ve come to know. We grow, we change, we complain about the traffic, and we still give directions using buildings that haven’t existed in 20 years. But when somebody needs help, this community shows up.
That’s what I see when I look through this Best of Livingston Parish issue.
Behind every winner is a person who unlocks the door every morning and takes another chance on this community. These are the people who employ our neighbors, sponsor our ball teams, donate to our schools and benefits, support our organizations and somehow find another gift card when someone walks through the door asking for a donation.
And now, all these years later, I sit in my office working on ads with my daughter.
My mom remembers me playing “ad layout” as a little girl. I remember watching my dad work in an empty newspaper office. And now I get to watch Elizabeth build a magazine around the community we both love.Three generations, connected by newspapers, magazines, advertising and the stories of the people around us.
So when you turn these pages, I hope you see more than a list of winners. I hope you see the people behind the signs you pass every day. Try a new restaurant. Walk into a local store. Congratulate someone you know.
Because Livingston Parish wouldn’t be Livingston Parish without the people brave enough to keep opening those doors.
