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A mass of Christian burial will be held for Linda Marie Guilbeaux Suire on Monday, November 7, at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Erath at 3:00, with visitation from 1:30 to the time of service in the church.
The Ladies Alter Society will say a rosary at 2:00. Rev. Clinton Sensat will officiate. Burial will precede at Our Lady of the Lake Cemetery in Delcambre.
On Sunday, October 30, at noon, our dear mother, Linda Marie Guilbeaux Suire, passed away peacefully at her home at the age of 97. She was courageously battling a debilitating stroke that had taken her speech, mobility, and finally, her life, but not without a fight, as the battle lasted for 13 years.
Linda was born on March 1, 1925, to the late Azard Guilbeaux and Odile nee Hulin.
The Great Depression influenced her first life experiences. Momma learned to conserve and not to waste a drop or a bite. She learned how to save and manage without material things and to make do at an early age. These lessons passed on have not been forgotten.
She was known to take someone else’s trash and convert it into a treasure or to keep her first refrigerator for 57 years because it still ran. Hand-me-downs were a family tradition.
She grew up on a farm and was more comfortable helping her Dad in the field but less agile in the kitchen. My father testified that his new bride’s first batch of biscuits were hockey pucks in flakiness.
She graduated high school in 1941. Two years later, she found herself engaged to my father, Pervis, a handsome chap from Delcambre. On a three-day pass in 1943, they married. Her wedding dress was fashioned from a torn parachute Daddy had procured from an airborne Marine.
He then went off to war till it ended and was discharged in November of 1945. They settled into married life and began their family. In 1946 my sister was born, then I was born in 1947, followed by a brother in 1949. Four more siblings were to follow.
We were the baby boomers. While Daddy was honing his carpenter and later builder /contractor skills, Momma was busy raising her brood and teaching us ethical values. We were taught that we were as good as anyone else, but she made sure we didn’t get too big for our boots. We were taught to respect all adults and to be polite to everyone, and her most basic rule was “tell the truth” because, according to her, you will only have to say it once if you tell the truth. Lying was discouraged in a variety of ways. Discipline was swift and sometimes painful, most often on the rear end.
She believed in granting freedom and independence as soon as a child measured up to the mark. She sewed our clothes, made her Sunday hats for church, and performed all the skills she had mastered that sometimes went unappreciated. Supper was our main meal, so all of us would wait until Daddy got home before we all sat at the table and ate our now tasty meals as a family: it was too bad if a child was impatient. All waited until everyone was present.
We would spend summer days collecting figs, blackberries, oranges, and pears for Momma to preserve as jellies and jams so that we could make our fast foods. Then, when we got older, she managed to squeeze in enough time to get a part-time job selling fabric at a department store.
When Daddy retired, they bought a camper and traveled all over Louisiana and the surrounding states. They traveled in a caravan for safety and added companionship. Momma loved to display her craftsmanship skills at the rallies.
Meeting new people their age was exciting and rejuvenating. Our mother was a strong, honest woman devoted to her family.
Today I realize how fortunate we were to have had her as our mother. Thank you, Momma, for having the strength of character and courage to tell us when one of us would complain, “but Johnny’s momma lets, “and she would say, “I’m not Johnny’s Momma I’m your momma “‘No!!! “ THANK YOU, Mother. Taking care of you was an honor and a privilege.
She is survived by six children, Herman, Russell (Lizette), Cheryl Hebert (Dalton), Pervis Jr. (Marie), Bryan (Roxane), and Robert (Sheila), 21 grandchildren, 47 great-grand children, and 26 great-great-grandchildren.
She was preceded in death by her parents, Pervis, her husband of 59 years, a daughter Linda Anne, her godmother affectionately known as Nan Da, a daughter-in-law Theresa, and a son-in-law Otis.
Momma wrote a monthly check to St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital until her stroke ended her mobility, CYPRESS Funeral Home and crematory are handling arrangements.

Written by Linda’s son, Herman

After a two-year absence, the Giant Omelette Celebration is happening in Abbeville this weekend.
The Omelette Celebration took time off the last two years because of COVID.
The Omelette Celebration will take place on Saturday and Sunday in downtown Abbeville.
The Celebration begins Saturday morning with the 5-K run, and the following will be the start of the arts and crafts show, along with the food show.
The Saturday events will stop at 5 p.m. and start again Sunday at 6 a.m. with a bike ride.
The official mass will be held at 9 a.m. Sunday at St. Mary Magdalen Catholic Church.
Starting at 1 p.m. on Sunday, the procession of chefs and eggs will be held around Magdalen Square.
At 1:15 p.m., the TABASCO Girls will dance, and the cooking of the eggs will start at 1:30 p.m. and continue until 4:30 p.m.
The first Grand Maitre, Whitney Atchette, spoke to the Abbeville Rotary Club Wednesday morning and educated the Rotarians about how the Omelette Celebration came to be.
Atchette said that, according to legend, when Napoleon and his army were traveling through the south of France, they decided to rest for the night near the town of Bessieres. Napoleon feasted on an omelette prepared by a local innkeeper, which was such a culinary delight that he ordered the townspeople to gather all the eggs in the village and to prepare a huge omelette for his army the next day.
From this beginning, the omelette became a tradition to feed the poor of the village at Easter. It has also become the symbol of a worldwide fraternity, rich in friendship, tradition and cultural exchange, known as the Confrerie.
In 1984, three members of the then Abbeville Chamber of Commerce (Emery “Bichon” Toups, Tracy Kays, and Sheri Meaux) attended the Easter Omelette Festival in Bessieres, France. They were later knighted the first of Abbeville’s Chevaliers.
They returned home with the determination to bring Abbeville closer to its French Heritage by hosting an omelette festival and joining the sisterhood of cities that celebrate the omelette - Bessieres, France; Frejus, France; Dumbea, New Caledonia; Granby, Quebec in Canada.; Malmedy, Belgium and Pigue, Argentina, later joined the fraternity, bringing the number making seven locations to celebrate this festival annually.
Abbeville has had 38 Omelette Celebrations over the years.
A total of 5,038 eggs will be cooked on Sunday.
This year, the 5,038th egg added is named. “Egglita Eggbert.” Seventh Ward Elementary Student Emilia Guillot coined the name. She will carry the egg and lead the procession on Sunday.
Chevaliers will crack and mix the eggs in pots for the next two hours. Then, non- Chevaliers will break the bread and dance in the streets.
Once the eggs are blended and the ingredients are added and stirred, the pots of eggs are carried to the 12-feet wide stainless steel skillet.
A total of 5,038 eggs, 50 pounds of onions, 75 bell peppers, four gallons onion tops, two gallons of parsley, 1.5 gallons of cooking oil, 6.5 gallons of milk, 52 pounds of butter, three boxes of salt, two boxes of black pepper, 15 pounds of Louisiana crawfish tails, and tabasco sauce all go on this 12-foot skillet.
The giant omelette is cooked over a wood fire in the middle of the street.
Second Grand Maitre Elray Schexnaider is in charge of getting the fire hot.
The fire will be lit around 11 a.m. so it can get nice and hot by the time they begin cooking the omelette, which happens around 1:30 p.m.
The Chevaliers will take turns stirring the eggs.
Once the eggs are cooked, they are handed out to the public for them to eat.

It is important to know and understand the history of Socialism, as America is under siege today by a strong Marxist movement that is actively trying to fundamentally transform America. There is only one problem: Socialism has never worked and has only resulted in inflation, severe poverty, and loss of freedom. The famous Austrian economist, F.A. Hayek, wrote several outstanding books on this subject, including “The Road to Serfdom”, and his last book in 1988, “Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism”, in which he stated: “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”
History has repeatedly proven the accuracy of the above statement. Look at China in the late 1950’s when it embarked on “The Great Leap Forward” to modernize itself under Chairman Mao Tse Tung and the communist party. China was at that time an agrarian society and Mao’s central planners forcefully took away from the masses their private plots of farmland and converted it into an industrial collective country focused on farming and steel manufacturing with backyard furnaces. Unfortunately, Mao and his central planners didn’t know what they were doing—the project was a total failure, and it was estimated some 50 million Chinese peasants died of starvation. In 1966 Mao changed course and embarked on the Cultural Revolution—which sadly also failed resulting in the deaths of millions more of Chinese peasants.
Socialism/Marxism/Communism also did not work in France in the late 1790’s (the French Revolution), nor in the Russian Revolution, Nazi Germany in WWII, the Soviet Union, Cuba, or more recently in Venezuela or Argentina. No matter where you tried it or what name you called it, totalitarianism was always the result.
Yet, the lure of Socialism remains strong. Here we are in 2022 with the global elite in America, Canada, Europe, and Australia planning on saving the world from Climate Change by rushing headfirst to shut down all oil and gas production, coal mines, and even nuclear power plants—so the world will start using clean green energy that could be available sometime in the next 25-50 years. Never mind that the greatest polluter of the globe, China, is still burning coal and buying all the Oil and Gas that Russia (and President Biden) will sell them.
Like Mao, the Global elite and their central planners don’t seem to be worried that we are already running out of diesel fuel—which you must have to plant, harvest, and deliver the crops that feed the people—and gas to heat the homes, cook the food, and run the factories. Why aren’t they worried? Is it “Fatal Conceit”?

Steve Gardes is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and Certified Valuation Analyst (CVA) with over 40 years of public accounting experience.

As the Ukrainian War drags on, some of America’s strongest allies are becoming less than supportive, in spite of strong urging by the Biden Administration. India has failed to offer any help, and the British support is becoming shaky due to their own financial and political problems at home. Italy’s new prime minister had some positive things to say about Vladimir Putin during her recent successful campaign. The strongest allied supporter out of the Europe Union has become France.
France? Are you kidding? Wasn’t it the French, under then-President Jacques Chirac, who strongly opposed invading Iraq? And if you go back to the 1960s, those of us who are a little older will remember French President Charles De Gaulle’s strong opposition to America entering Vietnam. Since we have little to show for the billions spent and the lives lost in both invasions, maybe the French opposition wasn’t all that bad an idea.
However, the French have received little appreciation or even a few good words from American military leaders. Who can forget General Norman Schwarzkopf’s comment that, “Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion.” And then there was General George Patton in World War II who said, “I would rather have a German division in front of me than a French one behind me.”
And boy, have we gotten mad at the lack of French support. In the congressional cafeteria at the nation’s capital, they changed the menu from French fries to freedom fries. That really showed them. And for the record, I don’t remember reading of any politician advocating the probation of French kissing.
I remember a 1995 episode of The Simpsons, where groundskeeper, Willie, is directed to become a French teacher at the local elementary school. “The French?” he hollers, “They’re nothin’ but a bunch of cheese-eating surrender monkeys.”
But that was then. Although we’ve had conflicts and disagreements with the French, if you take a history lesson in Franco-American relations, you will see that when it’s crunch time, we can generally count on them. France has come out strongly in support of America’s tenuous situation in the Middle East, and the U.S. seems eager to let bygones be bygones.
Without the support of the French, America could well have lost the Revolutionary War. Founding Father Thomas Jefferson contemplated joint democratic values while serving as US Ambassador to France living in Paris. Many regard Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America” as the best book written on the unique and exceptional American new form of government, that was later adopted by the French.
Many of us were close to speaking French as our native language. Napoleon’s agreement with Thomas Jefferson and Robert Livingston allowed for the creation of 15 new states, doubling the size of the United States. To give thanks to the French dictator, my home state of Louisiana agreed to hide him at what is now called The Napoleon House in the center of the New Orleans French Quarter. Unfortunately, before he could get to the Crescent City, he was captured and sentenced to exile on the Isle of St. Helena in the Atlantic Ocean.
There is a little Yankee bad taste from Napoleon’s involvement in the Civil War. France was avowed to be neutral, but it was common knowledge that Napoleon III was pulling for South. Oh well!
And don’t come down here in South Louisiana and make any derogatory comments about France. Thanks to die hard Frenchmen, who immigrated first to Canada, and then migrated down the Mississippi as Acadians, the French tradition, language, culture and bon appétit is alive and well, and growing throughout Cajun country. In Abbeville, a small community just south of Lafayette, many of the signs outside retail stores are written in French. Several radio stations play only Cajun music with a daily rendition of the Cajun national anthem Jolie Blond, often played by my old friend, fiddler Doug Kershaw.
If the Good Lord told me I have one more trip to make to another country before I pass on, I would choose Paris, and a ramble through southern France for the food, the ambience, the architecture, the Shakespeare Bookstore, a walk along the Seine. And the pretty girls. Ah, to be 25 again, in 1963, when I spent months in Paris experiencing the special ambiance that is rarely found elsewhere. If you want to relive that Franco jolie vie, take a friend or loved one to see Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris.”
Certainly the French have their own national interests at heart. But they have also made it clear that what America says matters. Over time, there are historical allies and there are strong allies. Right now, France and the U.S. can claim to have both — a solid past, and a present relationship that would seem to be in the best interests of both countries. We in Louisiana certainly hope so.
So pass the French bread. And for breakfast tomorrow, let’s have French toast and French roast coffee with French chicory, Louisiana style. And please, don’t shy away from an occasional French kiss.

Peace and Justice
Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers throughout the South and on websites worldwide.