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Class 2024 Valedictorians and Salutatorians
Congratulations
Valedictorians – Beau Bijeaux, Noah Doucet, Breaux Bridge High; Hayden Jacob Taylor, Kennedi Marie Taylor, Cecilia High;
Kayden Simoné Price, St. Martinville Sr. High
Salutatorians – Jessica Chavez Hernadez, Breaux Bridge High;
Charlee Rae Berard, Katlyn Marie Carpenter, Cecilia High;
Ciera Jeanae White, St. Martinville Sr. High
Dear Residents of St. Martin Parish,
First and foremost, I’m hoping everyone is safe and sound after the severe weather that crossed our parish last evening.
I have declared a Natural Emergency Disaster and, as such, we have begun the process of debris removal.
Please follow the directions of the attachment and begin bringing all debris to the roadside for removal. Separation is imperative so the process can proceed with speed and accuracy.
My office and council members are always available if questions arise concerning anything.
Thank you for your patience and perseverance in these trying times.
Sincerely,
Pete Delcambre
St. Martin Parish President
Because of the extensive damage caused by a suspected tornado in the Henderson area, all Cecilia area schools (Cecilia Primary, Teche Elementary, Cecilia Junior High, and Cecilia High School) will be closed on May 14, 2024. All essential personnel (administrators and custodians) should report to work. Graduation practice for Cecilia High School will take place at 12:00 PM at Cecilia High School.
Road or Lane Status
UPDATE: St. Martin Parish - Various Routes - Weather Related Road Impacts
Wednesday, April 10, 2024 2:14 PM
UPDATE #2: High water has now receded on La. 347 from Four Corners to its junction with La. 328. Also, crews have completed pumping water from the Henderson Roundabout.
UPDATE: All trees have been cleared from the roadways. However, high water remains on LA 347.
St. Martin Parish - Various Routes - Weather Related Road Impacts
Wednesday, April 10, 2024 8:58 AM
LAFAYETTE, La. - DOTD announces that the following road impacts are in place due to severe weather conditions.
ST. MARTIN PARISH
High water signs are in place on La. 347 (Cecilia High School Road) from Four Corners to its junction with La. 328.
Both lanes of La. 328 at the Hammocks Subdivision are blocked due to down trees.
A tree is currently down on the shoulder of Interstate 10 eastbound at mile marker 125.
Down tree blocking lane on Interstate 10 in the westbound direction at mile marker 123.
Motorists are encouraged to check the status of road conditions prior to beginning their commutes by utilizing the following resources:
511 Traveler Information: Travelers can also find information regarding road closures by visiting the 511 Traveler Information website at www.511la.org or by dialing 511 from their telephone and saying the route or region about which they are seeking information. You can also download the Louisiana 511 mobile app.
MyDOTD: Motorists can receive automatic and up-to-date information on local projects, lane and road closures, and other DOTD activity by signing up for MyDOTD here. You can also visit the DOTD website at www.dotd.la.gov.
Social media: Additional information can be found at DOTD’s Facebook and X (Twitter) pages.
Provides up to the minute traffic and transit information for Louisiana. View the real time traffic map with travel times, traffic accident details, traffic cameras and other road conditions. Plan your trip and get the fastest route taking into account current traffic conditions.
All St. Martin Parish schools are closed tomorrow, Superintendent Frederick Wiltz announced. Read his statement below.
Out of an abundance of caution, the St. Martin Parish School System has decided to close all schools and facilities Wednesday (April 10, 2024) due to the threat of severe weather. All students and employees are to remain home. The Finance Committee meeting and regular Board meeting scheduled for Wednesday afternoon will still take place as scheduled tomorrow. We appreciate everyone's understanding and cooperation. Please stay safe
Karl Jeter
Breaux Bridge - A Celebration of Life will be held on Saturday, March 23, 2024, from 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm in the Captain's Room at Pat's Restaurant in Henderson, for Karl Jeter, 69, who passed away on Sunday, September 10, 2023.
Ethan Courville we have your dog at St. Martin Parish Animal Services, 1004 Industrial Park Rd. We don't have a phone number on file for you so we are reaching out on face book. Please share so we can get her home.
State Football Title Forfeited
The 2023 Division II Non-Select State Football Champion title is now vacant.
Opelousas defeated Cecilia (26-13) in the Championship Game in December 2023 and were declared state champions.
However, an investigation by the Louisiana High School Athletic Association (LHSAA) has penalized the program which has
resulted in the forfeiture of all of the school’s wins from the 2023 season, including the state title. The head coach will be suspended for one year. The LHSAA found multiple rules violations during the investigation including registration issues with players in the program.
Opelousas will have an opportunity to appeal.
More information will be available in the March 6, 2024 Teche News.
CLOSURE OF ZIN ZIN ROAD BRIDGE
St. Martin Parish Government is currently repairing the Zin Zin Road Bridge. The bridge will remain closed until the repairs are completed. The repairs are anticipated to be completed and the bridge re-opened to traffic on January 30, 2024.
(St. Martinville, LA) Due to the forecasted rain event, St. Martin Parish Government will have self-serve sandbag
locations available today, Wednesday, January 24, 2024, from 9:00 a.m.-7:00 p.m. at the following locations:
South Barn-1011 Capritto Forty Arpent Road
Paul Angelle Park-2458 Cecilia Sr. High School Road
Ruth Bridge Barn-1035 Ruth Bridge Hwy.
Clayton Boudreaux Memorial Park-1028 Catahoula Hwy.
Please note there will be a limit of 20 sandbags per vehicle.
FoodNet Food Drive TODAY!
Tuesday, December 12, 7 am -6 pm, Veterans Home in Breaux Bridge. Volunteers are ready and waiting for you to drop off non-perishable foods and personal care items. Help those in need..
Teche News Publisher-Emeritus Henri Clay Bienvenu dies at 82
By: Ken Grissom
Henri Clay Bienvenu was born in 1941, but his story really begins over half a century earlier, around 1886, with a 12-year-old kid tacking obituary notices to telegraph poles in St. Martinville, notices that he had printed himself on a small hand press in the offices of a brand-new newspaper called the Weekly Messenger. The kid was Lazaire E. Bienvenu, Henri’s grandfather. Lazaire’s older brother, Albert, started the paper with another fellow, but by the time he was 20, Lazaire was running it. He was followed by his son, Marcel (“Blackie”), who was followed by his son, Henri. Along the way, the name was changed to Teche News. When Henri was growing up in the 1940s and ‘50s, St. Martinville was like Mayberry and surrounding St. Martin Parish was the epitome of the Sportsman’s Paradise. Henri’s sister Marcelle Bienvenu, famous for her books on Cajun and Creole cuisine, said their childhood “was always some big adventure.” They roughed it in various campsites around Catahoula Lake, had to melt the ice from the coffee pot in their duck camp near Gueydan, fished and swam in Bayou Teche. Henri, who was a few years older, was often charged with bringing Marcelle along as he and his chums roamed the nearby woods and fields. “One time they were practicing their boy scout knots and they tied me up and left me in a cane field,” she said. “Their knots held just fine but they forgot where they left me.” Blackie had to call the sheriff’s office to turn out a search party, by then after dark. “But Henri was a good little guy,” she said. “He was no trouble at all.” Like his father and grandfather, he started working at the newspaper at a young age. His lifelong friend Ray Pellerin (who followed his own father’s footsteps into the funeral home business) remembers Henri running around tacking funeral notices to the telephone poles, just like his grandfather. As a teenager, he fed lead to the Linotype machine and ran the presses. But by all accounts, Henri did not want to be a newspaperman. He majored in business administration at the University of Southwestern Louisiana, where he met another St. Martin Parish luminary, Paul Hardy, former lieutenant governor, secretary of state, and state senator. “Henri was Mr. Cool at USL,” Paul said. “He had a BMW Isetta,” (A one-cylinder four-wheel covered motor scooter with the door in front and no reverse.) “but it was a car. Nobody else had a car. Gas cost him 68 cents a week, he told me. And he even double-dated in it one time!” Paul met Henri through Phi Kappa Theta, where Henri had risen to president. They lived in a fraternity house on Jefferson Street, roomed together in fact. “Henri, who was a year older, appointed me to my first responsible position, he made me housemother! Ten fraternity rats and a bulldog!” (PKT at the time housed the university’s mascot, Gee.) “And I’m responsible for keeping the place clean. It was a long time before I sought another responsible position, I can tell you,” Paul said. Someone else Henri met at USL was Maria Comeaux of Lafayette. They met on a blind date in 1962, and married when Henri got out of Officer Candidate School, a newly minted second lieutenant in the U.S. Army. They began married life at the former Fort Bragg, now Fort Liberty, in North Carolina, where he served as an artillery officer. “We liked the life,” Maria said. “Fort Bragg had lots of activities. There were seven golf courses, seven officers’ clubs. And even back then, we both loved to travel.” The couple had decided to make the Army a career, until they came to the confluence of two events in the spring of ‘66. The war in Vietnam was ratcheting up, and Henri was fast approaching the time for him to re-up or end his tour of active duty. One by one they saw their friends being separated, wife and kids going home to family, husband moving in with Henri and Maria in their spacious triple-wide trailer until they received orders to ship out. “Henri didn’t know what to do,” Maria said. “He called his father for advice, and Blackie said ‘Come on home, Son. I need you here.’ Thus, Henri became the fourth Bienvenu to head up St. Martin Parish’s journal of record. But that’s far from the end of the story. Henri and Maria went on to have four daughters, a son, and 18 grandchildren. But Henri was also married to the Teche News. “Many, many times he would come home in the evening, watch the news on TV, eat supper, and then go back to work until eight or eight-thirty,” said Henri’s son, Gerard. He remained in the Army Reserves for a couple of years, commanding a combat engineer company in Lafayette and rising to the rank of captain before his separation from military service. One of those quiet, steady fellows whose words have weight, Henri became a pillar of the community, serving as president of the Jaycees and the Rotary Club, and lending valuable editorial space to any number of civic projects. Up the road in Breaux Bridge, his old friend Ray Pellerin turned to Henri when he needed help with one of his many endeavors, like a parish-wide fire-fighting district, or an annual Christmas boat parade. “Any project I ever did, Henri was right there,” said Ray. “Anything he could be involved in, he didn’t have to be asked twice.” One might expect a business administration graduate and former commanding officer to be a good business manager, but it turned out that Henri also inherited a good nose for news. And sports. Following Blackie’s lead, he penned what became the first thing many Teche News subscribers turned to, his newsy, gossipy, and often dryly humorous column “Pense Donc!!”, which, after Blackie’s death, incorporated his beloved “This & That...” column. Perhaps because Maria became a teacher, Henri took a special interest in education, covering the St. Martin Parish School Board until he died. Burton Dupuis, whose many roles in St. Martin Parish’s civic scene included a stint at superintendent of schools back in the 1980s, remembers Henri as a very thorough and accurate reporter. “Before my first meeting, my secretary told me to expect a phone call from Henri at 8 o’clock on Thursday morning,” Burton said. “And sure enough, at 8 o’clock, Henri was on the phone asking questions about the agenda. The school board didn’t always share the details, but that wasn’t going to stop him.” Burton instructed his staff to give Henri the same packet of information board members got, a practice that continues to this day. Henri also became a first-class news photographer, perfecting the art of tasteful, girl-next-door cheesecake in the monthly “Bayou Belle” feature whose subjects constitute an honored sorority in St. Martin Parish. His impactful coverage of Mardi Gras, the Crawfish Festival, La Grande Boucherie helped them to thrive and put St. Martin Parish on the map. His old friend and former roomie Paul Hardy continued to subscribe to and read the Teche News long after he moved permanently to Baton Rouge. “I’d call people back home and tease them, telling them about one thing or another, and they’d say, ‘How do you know that?’ It’s in the Teche News, I’d say. If you want to know what’s going on, you gotta read the Teche News!” Henri semi-retired in 2007, but he continued to cover the school board, and high school football, and write “Pense Donc!!” (translates as ‘Think About It!’), and of course shoot “Bayou Belle.” He had some health issues, heart surgery, cancer, but he kept on keepin’ on, until that Monday morning when he couldn’t make it to his desk without pausing to catch his breath. He was 82. Henri’s gone, and it’s not just the end of a line of talented and dedicated newspapermen. In some ways it’s the end of an era.
Henri Clay Bienvenu
September 21, 1941 – November 2, 2023 St. Martinville- A Mass of Christian Burial will be held at 1 p.m. on Saturday, November 11, 2023, at St. Martin De Tours Catholic Church for Henri Clay Bienvenu, 82, who died on Thursday, November 2, 2023 at Iberia Medical Center surrounded by his family. A visitation will take place at Pellerin funeral home in St. Martinville on Friday from 1 p.m. to 9 p.m. and from 9 a.m. until time of service on Saturday. A eulogy will be delivered by Paul Hardy at 6 p.m. and a rosary will be prayed at 7 p.m. on Friday. Father Vidrine will officiate at the funeral Mass. Readers will be Mary, Elizabeth, and Victoria Hebert, and Isabella Domino. Pall bearers will be Gerard Bienvenu, Leroy Domino, Brent Hebert, Shane Bennett, Ian Knemeyer, Jerome Broussard, Brian Fabre and Patrick Bienvenu. Honorary pall bearers will be Fred Bienvenu, Reuben Bienvenu, Butch Thornton, Ben Landry, and his eight grandsons. Interment will follow at St. Michael Cemetery. Henri Clay was born on September 21, 1941, and raised in St. Martinville. He was a graduate of St. Martin High School and USL. He served honorably in the U.S. Army becoming an artillery officer, was a member of the Jaycees, the Rotary Club, and the Louisiana Press Association, serving as president of each. He also was a member of the State Parks and Recreation Commission and began “Neighbors in Need.” He was the editor/publisher of the Teche News Newspaper for most of his life and although he “retired” in 2007 continued working and being an active part of the newspaper up until his death. Henri is survived by his wife of 59 years, Maria Comeaux Bienvenu; son Gerard M. Bienvenu (Lori), daughters, Catherine Knemeyer (Ian), Therese Bennett (Shane Sr.), Monique Domino(Leroy), and Suzanne Hebert (Dr. Brent Hebert); 19 grandchildren; two great grandchildren; siblings Marcelle Bienvenu Lasserre and Bruce Bienvenu. He is preceded in death by his father, Marcel “Blackie” Bienvenu; mother, Rhena Broussard Bienvenu, and sister, Edna Bienvenu Landry. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to The Community of Jesus Crucified, 103 Railroad Avenue, St. Martinville, LA 70582. Pellerin Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements.
Y’all this ole grumpy turns 82 years old Thursday, September 21.. Happy Birthday Henri C. Bienvenu!!!
GCU will be conducting smoke testing as part of its comprehensive sewer rehabilitation project for the City of Breaux Bridge. The smoke testing will take place on streets connected to Grand Point Avenue listed below from July 26th to July 29th, 2023
From 1515 Grand Point Avenue to 2347 Grand Point Avenue
Gayle Dr Rose Mae Dr
Kings Dr Marian Dr
Dom Blvd Frances LeBlanc Dr
Dup St Elmire Dr
Gravouia Dr Trahan Dr
Amilicar Dr Timic Dr
This study will involve the opening and entering of manholes in the streets and easements. An important task, SMOKE TESTING" of the sewer lines to locate breaks and defects in the sewer system. The smoke that you may see coming from the vent stacks on houses or holes in the ground is NON-TOXIC, HARMLESS, HAS NO ODOR, AND CREATES NO FIRE HAZARD. The smoke should not enter your home unless you have defective plumbing or dried up drain traps. If this occurs, you should consult your licensed plumber, because if the harmless smoke can enter through faulty plumbing, the potential exists for dangerous sewer gases to enter your home. If you have any seldom used drains, please pour water in the drain to fill the trap tonight, which will prevent smoke from entering. Drain traps should always be filled with water to prevent sewer gases or odors from entering the building. Some sewer lines and manholes may be located on the backyard easement property line. Whenever these lines require investigation, members of the inspection crews will need access to the easements for the sewer lines and manholes. GCU personnel are uniformed and carry identification. Homeowners do not need to be home and AT NO TIME WILL FIELD CREWS HAVE TO ENTER YOUR BUSINESS OR RESIDENCE. We anticipate the smoke testing will require a few hours in your area. Your cooperation is greatly appreciated. The City of Breaux Bridge, LA is doing all it can to ensure that the sanitary sewer system is structurally sound and functioning properly at all times. The objective of this inspection program is to provide the City of Breaux Bridge, LA with the data needed to operate, maintain and repair the sanitary sewers. We appreciate your patience and understanding while we’re working in your neighborhood. Please contact us for more information on the Sewer System Evaluation Survey (SSES) being conducted in your area.
For questions, please call:
GCU LLC
Office: 251-725-0200 M-F 7:30 – 5:00
24 Hour emergency contact: 337-277-7023
Congratulations Class of 2023
Breaux Bridge – Valedictorian Shelby Kay Ivanoff ; Salutatorian Landon Michael Fremin (Not pictured).
Cecilia – Valedictorians Carlee Claire Faulk, Joely Morgan Lalonde, Emma Mae Meche and Bree Alyse Taylor; Salutatorian Krystal Marie Calais.
St. Martinville – Valedictorian Chloe Viator; Salutatorian Gabrielle Broussard.
214 North Main
70582
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