One Very Special Day

This story begins two years ago when we ran a cover story on the Gillis Long Center down in Carville. I spent a day there researching the piece with Col. Herb Fritts and Col. Jim McCall who were running the Job Corps and Youth Challenge programs back then.

Cathy Long stands beneath one of the massive old oak trees that has seen the present site of the Gillis Long Center go from sugarcane plantation to America’s only leprosarium to a prison hospital before becoming a point of refuge, challenge and opportunity for at risk young people in Louisiana.

The Gillis Long Center is located at a 400-acre antebellum plantation site on a peninsula surrounded by the Mississippi River just 30 minutes south of Baton Rouge. It was formerly The National Leprosarium. At any given time as many as 600 victims of leprosy (now known as Hansen’s disease) were locked away there for life. North America’s only leper colony started in 1894, and today 15 victims of the disease still live there.

In 1949 Dr. Guy Henry Faget, director of the Carville Leprosarium, developed a way to halt the disease with sulfone drug therapy. While not a cure, the drugs effectively stop leprosy in its tracks and can even reverse some of its horrible effects.

A few weeks after publishing that article my office phone rang on a Saturday morning. The caller was Cathy Long of Washington D.C. who explained that she is the widow of Congressman Gillis Long who died in 1985.

Ms. Long explained that working to pull together the operation dedicated to serving “at risk” young people in Long’s old District 8, which included Baton Rouge, was very special to both her and her husband. She thanked me for publishing the article and made me promise to send her several copies of the magazine.

We talked for a few minutes and realized neither of us had ever visited the National Hansen’s Disease Museum that shares the site with the Gillis Long Center. She said the next time she came to Louisiana we would visit the museum together. I told her that would be fine, mailed her the magazines and promptly forgot all about it.

Imagine my surprise when the phone rang bright and early on a recent Monday morning and it was Cathy Long calling to say she was in Louisiana and ready to go to the National Hansen’s Disease Museum. She was staying with her friend Louise Couvillion at St. James Place. We agreed that Wednesday would be a good day.

Of course, when we spoke on Monday it did not occur to either of us that the museum would be closed for Veterans Day on Wednesday, Nov. 11. I found that out when I called fellow Rotarian Col. Fritts who put me in touch with Post Commander and Breaux Bridge native Col. Clyde Guidry. Col. Guidry explained that everything would be shut down because of the national holiday. He said he had a key to the museum, but he did not know the alarm code. Still he told me to just bring the ladies and come on down.

Veterans Day turned out to be beautiful. At 10:30 a.m. I picked up the two ladies who I had never met and we headed out. On the way down to Carville I learned that just 17 days into a new term Gillis Long passed away from a heart attack and a special election was called. Cathy Long actually ran for her husband’s seat and won over four strong candidates. Cong. Cathy Long served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1985 until 1987 when health issues forced her to forego further service.

At the Gillis Long Center we were treated like royalty. Col. Guidry met us at the front gate and escorted us to a meeting room in the old antebellum plantation home known as Woodlawn. The old sugarcane plantation was located at a place called Indian Camp. It was named that because many Native Americans lived around the mouth of nearby Bayou Manchac. Manchac is the Native American word for “shortcut.” The bayou was a shorter way to the Gulf of Mexico in those days than sailing all the way to the mouth of the river.

The plantation home was built on the property in 1857. Gorgeous oak trees and magnolias are everywhere. It looks like Audubon Park in New Orleans.

Anyway, Col. Guidry told us all of that and more. He said the plantation failed and the property was abandoned in 1894 when the state of Louisiana leased it and brought in the first seven lepers by barge. He said the Sisters of Charity arrived three years later and lived in the old plantation house which had no roof by then. The patients lived in the slave quarters. Doctors came periodically, and in 1907 the state bought the property, but there was little or no medical care at first, just housing. The federal government became involved in 1917 but everything was on hold until after World War I. The property was formally deeded to the U.S. in 1921.

The first federal buildings were constructed in 1927 and 1928. They housed Marine officers at Marine Hospital No. 66. The hospital was built in 1937 and more buildings were built soon after. They also built 2.5 miles of two-story walkways connecting everything because of the mistaken fear that leprosy was a highly contagious disease. Nothing could leave the leprosarium.

Finally the quarantine was lifted in 1968 and the patients could leave. Many left but returned because they were not readily accepted in society and many had trouble adjusting to the outside world.

In 1986 the place officially became the Gillis Long Center. Some of the buildings that are now on the Historical Register were transformed into a prison hospital. That did not work out very well, and in 1999 the property was leased to the State of Louisiana The bill called for creation of a place for education, training and care of at-risk young people. That first year was entirely state funded and the Louisiana National Guard began to play a large role. Meanwhile, in 1999, some 100 patients of the old Hansen’s Disease Center were offered an annual stipend of $32,000 tax free for life. Two-thirds took the deal and moved on, but a third did not want to leave. At about that same time a $60 million program of infrastructure improvements began. following the passage of the Baker Bill sponsored by then U.S. Rep. Richard Baker.

Today 500 young people are enrolled in one of three phases of the Challenge program at the Gillis Long Center that provides education and job training. The three phases begin with Youth Challenge which is a 22-week residential program run by the Louisiana National Guard that helps students earn their GED high school equivalency certificate. Next is Job Challenge, also run by the National Guard, where students are trained in the auto tech program, the welding program, culinary arts, firefighting, nursing, etc. This is all under the auspices of the Job Corps Academy supported by the Department of Labor, the Petroleum Institute, Associated General Contractors and others who are working to reduce the critical shortage of skilled craft people in our area.

Col. Guidry said the graduation ceremony for the Louisiana Youth Challenge Program is always very well attended and is wonderful to behold. “ America is a very wealthy country,” he said “but by far our most valuable assets are our young people.”

The folks at the Gillis Long Center are offended when their program is referred to in the media as a “boot camp” because that is not what it is. While there is a military discipline aspect to the program, the young people who apply do so in order to increase their reading level by an average of 4.2 grade levels in just 22 weeks. Fully certified teachers work with very small, very intense classes in a program where there are six highly qualified counselors for 200 students. And that is just the beginning. “Our graduates leave with more than an education, they leave with a career,” said Col. Guidry. “Our best recruiters are our graduates.”

After enjoying a delicious lunch in the dining facility with some of the students and teachers, we got our tour of the museum. Of course it was closed, and Col. Guidry set off the alarm by opening the wrong back door before we got in, but we did spend a very interesting and informative hour in the museum. We were able to read some of Dr. Faget’s earliest research papers and learn about the Sisters of Charity who served the lepers so faithfully for so many years. The museum is filled with antique medical equipment and photos taken by Johnny Harmon who was a victim of leprosy and an outstanding photographer at the Hansen’s Disease Center.

Eventually it was time to say thanks to Col. Guidry and return to Baton Rouge. I had noticed that Cathy Long was moving rather slowly getting into and out of the car. On the way back it came out in conversation that she had recently been operated on for breast cancer and was actually staying with her friend as part of her recuperation. No doubt the day was difficult for her, but her spirits were high and we had a great time.

When the day comes for me to write about one of the nicest and most interesting people I have ever met, Cathy Long and her friend Louise Couvillion will be right up there near the top of the list. And thanks to Col. Guidry Veterans Day 2009 will be listed along with the days my children and grandchildren were born as one of my very best.

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