3-9-99

The Reunion

Sunday afternoon, as John Balfantz was on duty at the Tourist Center, I drove there in the afternoon to spend some time of
SHARING talk with him. Things were slow, as there was little travel until later in the afternoon.

We were sitting outside on the porch when a couple (two ladies) approached. One walked with a cane. As Johnny also
uses a cane, he stood up and walked to the rail and says to the lady with the cane, "I sure like your cane". The other lady says to
Johnny "I KNOW YOU, you were my teacher at Delgado College in New Orleans many years ago".

They came up the steps and the sharing of things began. The lady was originally from Honduras and had come to New
Orleans to go to college. She, while in school in New Orleans, had taken a couple of classes that Johnny had taught.

Now Johnny was Johnny, he proceeded to tell her "I have short term memory, excuse me if I do not remember your name or
other things. They talked for over an hour. Neither one of them seemed to mind that Johnny did not remember many things.

Johnny tried to explain his disease to her. She tells him that she knows of the disease.

The lady with the cane was her friend that the two of them from Jefferson Parish had started to visit Museums, Plantation
Homes, and other historical places as a sort of therapy for her.

It seems that they were going to Laura Plantation at Vacherie and had made a wrong turn and ended up at Sorrento. Now
we all agreed that they had not made a wrong turn. All agreed that GOD had sent them to visit us. In the past year or so, more or
less, they have visited many tourist places around New Orleans, gradually expanding away from New Orleans. After a visit to the
museum at Carville, they spoke well of what had impressed them. It is an impressive place.

The Hansen Center at Carville has made the news this week in the papers. The few Residents left do not want to leave.
They're leaving what has been their home for most of their life would be somewhat like a parent putting their six year old child on the
school bus to start their education, while telling the child something like this: "Good-by, for when your school day is over you will go
to a new home and you will be given different parents". To me, that is the way I see it from the Carville Residents viewpoint. The
workers and doctors at Carville are like parents. The Residents have no home, only a strange new place.

Later that Sunday afternoon at the Tourist Center, there was a lady from a small town in the Rio Grande Valley with several
children and young people came into the center and she had visited there several times before. She picked up some brochures to
take with her. Her husband is with the company that is doing the pipeline. She and the children and some friends of the children
come down on some weekends to visit the husband and father and at the same time, show the friends where the father lives and
works.

There are some interesting people that visit the Tourist Center.



O. W. Stevens