Curnel grew up on a farm in the Esther area
near St. James Catholic Church. Mornings
began at 4 a.m. milking the cows and helping
with his father’s rice crops. He also worked
with area farmers helping to get their crops
in as well. One crop to pick was cotton,
“but the worst job I ever had was picking
jalapeno peppers out in the hot sun. And the
peppers would burn your skin too” said
Curnel. Also appearing on his resume was
work at the Vermilion Creamery, delivering
newspapers and bagging and stocking
groceries at the National Food Store.
Through the years of marriage, Lois has
managed to keep Curnel organized, especially
when he combined work, family and the many
years of volunteer service for numerous
organizations.
Out of high school, Curnel went to work in
the oil field until he was injured in a
crane accident while offshore. Following
back surgery, he went to work for Mobil Oil
in Cow Island as a plant operator. He
decided that working the over-night shift
was going to give him more time to be
involved with the lives of his children and
their activities.
“One of the moms called me during baseball
season,” said Curnel, “to tell me that the
coach of the team had just quit right before
the beginning of the season. It turned out
to be one of the best things that ever
happened to me. We were playing on the old
Palombo Field, where the football field is
now. There were no bleachers; people had to
bring their own chairs and, eventually, we
even built our own dug outs. The team was
8-9 year-old boys and the moms would sit
behind home plate. When their son would get
a hit, the ladies would run along the
sideline with them up to first base.”
His involvement with baseball in 1971
eventually led to seven years as the
president of the local Babe Ruth
Association. Of course, he had to work his
way to the top spending time coaching,
performing field maintenance and serving on
the board of directors. Once he became
active with one group, he migrated to
helping with several other groups as well:
Vermilion Youth baseball, Abbeville Football
League with Don Chauvin and Cajun Youth
Sports with Robert Morvant.
“When my kids quit playing, I just kept
going. There’s a drive in me to see the
youth of our area accomplish something. But
not only in sports, but with their education
as well. I made sure they did their homework
too. I see a lot of my former players around
town and they introduce me to their children
as ‘coach’,” said Curnel.
While his grandson played football and
baseball for Mount Carmel and Vermilion
Catholic, Curnel was there assisting Kelly
Rogers with field maintenance for six years.
Then, in the early 1970s, Curnal began
working with the Bares Ranch for the
handicapped. As his usual activities
increased, he spent four years serving as
the third president of the ranch. “This was
one of the things closest to my heart” said
Curnal, whose own son Randy is mentally
handicapped.
He described the ranch as a place where
people could go to have an outlet from just
staying at home and out of the way. The
ranch had animals and gardens where the
people at the ranch got involved and did the
work. There were employees at the ranch as
well, and Curnal said they had to follow all
of the hospital guidelines from the state to
be in compliance.
Scotty Daigle is the current director of the
Bares Ranch who said the ranch started out
as a means of self help for the handicapped.
They now have a vocation work program where
they do janitorial work, lawn work, make
candles, recycle Mardi Gras beads, recycle
newspapers and offer a rent-a-plant program
for businesses who want to have greenery
growing on location. The group also runs the
Vermilion ARC clothing store at 2325 Charity
Street.
Daigle said there are 35 consumers that come
for the 8 a.m. - 3 p.m. workday. Their
schedule is similar to the school year, but
the store operates all year. The money from
the store sales goes to paying the salary
for the consumers who work there, and part
of the staff salaries as well.
From this point on, Curnel would seem to
always have a community project mixed into
his daily life.
When the Southeast Water District No. 2 came
up in the planning stages, he was for the
project, but not actively involved in
getting it started. He said the water
project came up three times and failed in
the voting by residents of the area. The
fourth time the project came around, he was
challenged by someone and became an active
participant in getting the word out about
the benefits of the new water service
project.
“Donald Anderson and I got together and
started going house to house talking to
neighbors and area residents about the need
for the improved water service. We wrote a
letter outlining all the benefits of the
water system and used that to help do our
part to get the 500 signatures necessary for
the initiative to pass,”said Curnel.
He has been a board member of the water
system since 1994, and chairman of the board
since 2001.
In 1995, the next project that walked into
his life was the cemetery at St. James
Catholic Church in his old Esther
neighborhood. He said that his family
(great-grandfather) had put up the first
acre and a half for the cemetery, and it had
always been a family member who maintained
the property, cutting the grass and keeping
the plot records.
Then, Hurricane Rita came to visit and
played havoc with the cemetery property. St.
James church had its share of problems: the
doors were pushed aside and the entire
church was filled with marsh grass, mud,
water and various animal life looking for
refuge. The cemetery was equally devastated
with vaults floating out of the ground. Some
of the vaults washed out with the receding
tide; some were merely displaced from their
grave site; others had major damage as the
water and humidity combined to destroy what
other families had already grieved over.
“The area has a very high water table,” said
Curnel, “and because of that, most of the
graves are very shallow. There were 52
graves in the St. James cemetery that washed
up after Hurricane Rita. My family had gone
to Arkansas when we evacuated and we saw on
the television coverage shots of the Esther
area and then what had happened in the
cemetery. We could see the vaults floating
in the water on the news coverage.”
While trying to figure out how to fix the
problem, he described the cemetery situation
as a big puzzle. “I said a prayer to God to
help me start the processes and called upon
the Blessed Virgin Mary to help me. I ask
for her help with almost everything I do,”
commented Curnel.
One thing that helped find the location of
where everyone was buried was Christine
Menard’s copy of the “Cessac Cookbook”. In
it, there was a listing showing row by row
who was in each plot. Now, the task became
the process of identifying who was in the
vaults and caskets that had floated out of
their grave site.
Of the 51 caskets that displaced, he and the
folks working with him were not able to
identify 29 individuals. Of those
identified, some were identified by the
clothing they were wearing, some were
identified by viewing the body. For those
not identified, a communal grave site was
created with a single monument identifying
those buried in the new location.
Curnel said the cemetery operation had help
from the family members, those living in the
community, FEMA, and the Utah National
Guard. He said the guard unit had the
equipment necessary to lift and move the
vaults back to their original locations.
Of all the work Curnel has done in the
community, from working with the youth of
the parish, to providing clean water to his
neighbors, to helping those who can’t help
themselves through the Bares Ranch, to
working with the St. James cemetery, he
doesn’t want the attention drawn to him,
but, rather, to what the project succeeded
to do. And he always talks about the other
people he has had helping him along the way.
Curnel concluded saying “I have always
believed I have been successful with these
projects because I surrounded myself with
other good people.”