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The Record TheRecordLive.com
Vol. 60 No. 3
Distributed FREE To The Citizens of Bridge City and Orangefield
Week of Wednesday, June 19, 2019
Leaky roof water tortures clerk, county Dave Rogers
For The Record
Orange County District Clerk Vickie Edgerly was not a happy camper. Neither was County Judge Carl Thibodeaux. Nor Maintenance Director Kurt Guidry. Nor Nancy Beward, the lady tasked with obtaining government grants from FEMA and other agencies. It rained all over the Orange County Commissioners’ Court meeting Tuesday afternoon near the end of a deep 90-minute agenda as Edgerly pleaded for someone
to fix a leaky roof. “Just put a tarp up on there and get some bricks to weigh it down,” Thibodeaux said, presumably to Guidry. The maintenance chief is nearly two years into trying to repair county buildings damaged by Tropical Storm Harvey as fast as possible with as little county money as possible. Beward explained Tuesday that under the terms required by FEMA, not only is the main county courthouse considered a historical building, but also the attached county and district clerk offices at each end.
OFISD taps Clark to join school board Dave Rogers
For The Record
Laura Clark, vice president for finance and administration at Olson Engineering, is the newest member of the Orangefield school board. “I wanted an opportunity to give back and be a part of the school district and this is great,” Clark said after she was named to replace Jude Graffagnino on the sevenmember board of trustees Monday night. Graffagnino resigned recently because his son-inlaw, Corey Sheppard, was being interviewed for a job in the district, school board president Dr. Ron Risinger said. Sheppard, who was assistant principal at Little Cypress-Mauriceville High School, has been hired by the Orangefield school district. Clark is the wife of Lamar University head track coach Trey Clark. The couple have two sons that attend Orangefield schools. “The kids of Orangefield
have a bright future ahead,” Laura Clark said. “I want to be a part of it.” A native of Orange and West Orange-Stark High grad, Clark is a Lamar University grad, with a degree in accounting. She worked in private accounting for 10 years before spending 11 years at the City of Beaumont, the last nine of them as the city’s Chief Financial Officer. She joined Olson Engineering two years ago. She will fill the final threeplus years of Graffagnino’s four-year term. He won reelection without an opponent in November of 2018. His term expires in 2022. A total of four people expressed interest in filling Graffagnino’s seat. They were Stephen Quarles, Chris Kovach, Jack Smith and Clark. “One of the nice things about Orangefield is we have so many people dedicated to our school district, and they
Beward said commissioners had two options: “We can call TDEM [the state’s FEMA outlet] and have an immediate conference call and if they declare
an emergency, we’ll get it all in writing so you can proceed,” she said. “If they say, ‘No, you’ve got to follow the normal procedure, it’ll probably be eight
months down the road before we get an answer.” Beward said in that case, she’d recommend removing the district clerk add-on from the county’s mitigation
application. The entire courthouse building was shut down after Harvey’s record flooding in COUNTY BUSINESS Page 3A
BC author: “Finding the Face of Evil” Penny Leleux it For The Record “Finding the Face of Evil” is more about freedom than justice. There is no true justice in this tale of a woman’s struggle dealing with a rape of which she has no memory, because she was drugged. She didn’t even know for sure if she had been raped, since she had no memories, except it resulted in a pregnancy. This is a true story of Megan Baker written by Bernice Snell. I tell you that now, because there is some confusion reading the book, whose story it is. Written in first person, but never really stating her name, it is unclear until the end if it was Baker’s story or Snell’s story. Nevertheless, the story tells of the internal struggle women feel when this happens to them. It is a story that could be told over and over again through the ages. This couldn’t even be considered date rape, because Baker had no idea who did it. She was waiting for a friend at a bar, shooting pool. The next thing she knew, she woke up in front of her workplace with no recollection of even finishing her drink or pool game. Since she didn’t really know what happened, she didn’t do a rape kit; go to the police or take any other measures. Many women don’t. They fear the ridicule, humiliation and blame that would be put upon
Bernice Snell will have her first book signing for “Finding the Face of Evil,” 9:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m., June 29 at the Bridge City Senior Citizens Center. RECORD PHOTO: Penny LeLeux
them. She couldn’t even give any kind of description of who could have done this. She had no idea who it was. If it had not resulted in a pregnancy, she wouldn’t have known for sure she
was raped. She kept silent for almost 19 years, tortured with the secret. It wasn’t until her son wanted to find out if he had any brothers that his step-father and great-aunt
(Snell) started searching using DNA results and ancestry.com that the answer was found. The entire search was done with them never NEW BOOK: FACE Page 3A
OFISD TAPS CLARK Page 3A
World War II veteran Ed Hyatt recalls ‘Dash for Rhine’ Dave Rogers
For The Record
Orange’s Ed Hyatt worked side-by-side with legendary Gen. George S. Patton in one of the pivotal campaigns of World War II. They were side-by-side for about a second. “Our division was attached to [Patton’s] Third Army in the ‘Dash for the Rhine,’” Hyatt, 97, recalled a time early in 1945 as Allied Forces fought their way into Germany. “We were lined up on the road, stopped at an intersection, and here comes a jeep as close to me as you. Someone said, ‘There goes Patton,’ and sure enough, it was him.” Like Patton, Hyatt commanded tanks.
But the First Baptist Church member, a native of DeQuincy, Louisiana, normally had only three – and, occasionally six – tanks under his control, while Patton had upwards of 300,000 men and hundreds of tanks. Hyatt, a 1943 graduate of LSU who had prepped in the ROTC before joining the Army, was a lieutenant in an artillery company when he shipped out to England late in 1944. “I went from Southampton [England] across the channel to France in January of 1945 and went through a replacement depot,” Hyatt said.
“I ended up in the 43rd Tank Battalion. There are no artillery officers in a tank battalion. I was the only artillery officer in the battalion.” Of the 42 Sherman tanks in a World War II tank battalion, Hyatt was in charge of a battery of three, the ones from each of the three companies outfitted with 105-millimeter howitzers. They could fire shells as far as nine miles. “These tanks were held back, to guard the tank company headquarters,” Hyatt DASH FOR RHINE Page 3A
Ed Hyatt, a native of Louisiana now living in Orange, recalls his World War II service during a recent interview at home. RECORD PHOTO: Dave Rogers
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