By Bob Holeman

(Bob Holeman conducted this series of interviews with local World War II in 2011-12.  Most of those 34 American heroes have passed away in the decade since).

Seeking to put some distance from an oppressive home environment in Arkansas in the early 1900s, Arch Cornelius Riggs Sr. took a fancy to a site down a wagon road not far from Packton and homesteaded 160 acres.

Virgin timber abounded.  “Daddy worked in the woods,” said A.C. Riggs, who lives on a portion of that 160 acres that he now owns.  He points to the tree line that marks the Winn Parish line and describes the proximate historic Old Harrisonburg Road.  “He made crossties and lumber.  He also grew cotton and corn and stuff.  Growing up, we worked in the field, too, helping him.”

The Riggs family was one, like so many during World War II, that sent several sons off in defense of our nation.  “My oldest brother, Clyde, was one of the first around here to be called up.  But he never got further than Texas where he served through the war.

“Next was my brother Oliver, who we called ‘Blue.’  When he was 17, Mom (Bessie Guin Riggs) and Dad signed for him and he headed for the Navy.  But he was drafted into the Marines.  He was shipped to the Pacific where he was involved in the invasions, including Tarawa and Saipan.  He came home but didn’t live too long afterwards.”

But this account is of the younger A.C. Riggs, born Dec. 20, 1926.  He attended Georgetown school in grades 1 through 9 and finished out his final two years at Selma, graduating in 1944.  “On Monday, Dec. 8, 1941, the principal called us all into the auditorium.  He told us we were at war.  At the time, I thought it didn’t concern me.  It was across the ocean and I was just in high school.  But it did concern me.  It took two years of my life.”

Riggs said he wasn’t in a hurry to register but when he turned 18 in December of his graduating year, “Miss Kidd sent me my draft notice.  In February, I came up to Fort Humbug to be examined.  It was a big, old building.  We had to pull off all our clothes.  We ran around all day without a stitch on and probably saw a dozen different doctors, physical and mental.  I was a country boy who’d worked in the field all his life so there was nothing wrong with me.”

Asked about his choice of services, Riggs picked the Army.  Like young enlistees at that phase of the war, he thought he’d be participating in the final invasion of Japan.  But it wouldn’t be.

“I was on a ship on the way to Japan when the Japs decided they’d had enough.  I’ll tell you right now, we were some happy soldiers.  I’d stood on the deck, watching as the Golden Gate disappeared on the horizon.  I wondered if I’d ever see it again.

“And even if the country of Japan had surrendered, there were still soldiers out there, hiding in caves in the Philippines and places, who wouldn’t surrender.  And our own ship had to zigzag across the Pacific because there was a captain of a Japanese submarine who refused to surrender.

“When we got to Okinawa, we got into a typhoon, like a hurricane.  They said the seas were 35 feet high, with waves breaking over the deck.  That ship rolled and rocked.  We had long tables in the mess and you sat down with a tray.  When the ship would rock, your tray would slide one way.  When it rolled, your tray would come back and you’d take another bite.”

They reached the Lingayen Gulf in the Philippines where they spent the next month dealing with Japanese POWs.  “We were ashore.  By the time we got there, they’d gotten all of those that had been hiding in the caves.  But the Japanese had been brutal to the locals while they’d been there, killing folks just because they could.

“One morning, there was a bunch of Filipinos ganged up.  I watched and they had a long net out in the water, with boys and girls pulling it in.  It was full of little fish.  Those little kids took handsful of those fish and put them into their mouths, still flopping around, and ate them.  They were starving.  The Filipinos were gentle people.”

Riggs described the housing of the local people.  They were huts, set up on stilts.  The family lived inside, with the livestock beneath.  He said that when the family’s water buffalo, (beast of burden and milk producer) was put out in the field, they’d place a small child on its back, just behind its massive horns.  “Out in the blistering sun.  That was to keep anyone from stealing the buffalo, I suppose.”

After their time there, the soldiers moved on to Korea.  This was well before the outbreak of the Korean War (1950) but the region was tense.  “It had been taken over by the Japs in 1935 and many of the Koreans had been converted to soldiers.  They were a whole lot like the Japs, though maybe not so cruel.  But they’d still beat their prisoners to a bloody pulp.  We walked guard 24 hours a day and I tell you it wasn’t an empty rifle we carried.  If we ever went to town, we went in groups.  They didn’t fool with us and I only had to pull a gun on one of them.

“When we went on in to Korea, in Pusan, it was wintertime.  There was no place to stay and we had to sleep on the ground.  It was wet but frozen as hard as a rock.  We were there for a couple of weeks.  Then we moved to Chonju in central Korea.  That’s where we built our own Quonset huts.”

Once the soldiers accumulated enough honor points to get out of service, they were shipped out of central Korea to a site near Seoul. There they’d stay for another month before berth could be arranged on a ship (“if you could call it that,” quipped Riggs).  The corporal headed home on a Liberty Ship on a voyage that lasted 35 days.  On Dec. 25, 1946, he was discharged.  “It was a good Christmas present.”

Over his two years of service, all his food had been canned or dehydrated.  His only fresh meat came from one low-flying goose he shot with his rifle.

Riggs caught a train home from Washington state but when he arrived, there were no jobs to be found for the late-returning soldiers.  For a time, a government program helped with $20 per month.  He had no interest in the GI Bill.  Then he got a job in the oil field and found a successful career there for the next 45 years.

Growing up, Riggs lived about a mile down the road from Inez Hennegan.  “I’d seen her many times before, a little girl with long hair in pigtails.  But she was younger and caught a different bus.  To make a long story short, she came home with one of my sisters one day after I returned.  I guess you could say I noticed she’d grown up, she wasn’t a little girl any more.  She was 15 or 16.  We dated 2 or 3 years before we got married.”

That was Feb. 15, 1949.  “I didn’t make a lot of money back them.  I wanted to get married but didn’t have the $3 for a license.  Maybe I had a dollar.  I called Inez and she sent me the other $2.  We were married in Mansfield.”

The couple has three daughters and a son.  They also have 11 grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren.

By Bob Holeman

An 8th-grade Winn Parish student has been named to the 31-member Legislative Youth Advisory Council that will interact with the Louisiana Legislature over the next 12 months.

In an effort to foster a better understanding of civic participation among the state’s young people, the legislature in 2007 approved Act 118.  The goal is to open lines of communication between youth and lawmakers on issues important to those young citizens, issues ranging from education and employment to safe environments and poverty to underage drinking and drug abuse.

Among the 31 Louisiana students selected to serve on the upcoming council is Joe Lewis IV, 14, an 8th-grade student at Winnfield Middle School.  He is the son of Joe Lewis III and Tenisha Phillips and the grandson of Paula Lewis.  He will be one of three students representing Louisiana’s Fifth Congressional District.  Three students have been selected from each of the state’s six congressional districts, with the balance of the council selected at-large.  A total of 236 applicants who will be in grades 9 through 12 sought the posts.

Members of the Louisiana Legislative Youth Advisory Council will gather at the Capitol in Baton Rouge in July for a two-day seminar, then return for one-day Saturday meetings every other month, said Lewis.  “I consider it the honor of a lifetime to give back to Louisiana, and I will do everything in my ability to serve effectively.”

This project is overseen by the Louisiana Commission on Civic Education.

Contact Teddy at teddy@latech.edu or Twitter @MamaLuvsManning

As folks are getting out and about and into their normal routines following the COVID shutdown, First
Presbyterian Church in Winnfield has resumed its Health & Wellness program from 8:30 to 9:30 a.m. on a
Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule.
Prior participants may refer to this as their old “Exercise Class” but instructor Bolton Phillips says the

current program is focused on body wellness rather that weight-centered exercise. “This is a seated, low-
to-no-impact program designed to get energy moving in the body. When you’re saying to yourself, ‘I

can’t do what I used to do.’ More flexibility.”
Targeted groups could be senior adults, those with limited mobility, those who have had surgery or simply
persons wanting a good routine of health for the body. Class fee is $30 per month. To register or make
inquiries, call 318-294-7796 or just come by the Presbyterian Church between 8:30 and 9:30 on class
days.

“Winn Parish is certified as a ‘Work Ready Community,” says Ms. Mindy Goodman, sites coordinator for Area 60 of the Louisiana Workforce Development [LWD] authority. Goodman provided the members of Winnfield’s Rotary club on May 17, 2023, with information on programs and services available to local citizens through LWD Area 60’s WIOA. WIOA stands for the Workforce Innovative Opportunities Act passed in 2014, which provides federal grants to states for training and assisting underprivileged, underserved and low-income youth and adults in obtaining well-paying employment. Area 60 includes Avoyelles, Concordia, Catahoula, Grant, LaSalle and Winn Parishes.

Attaining the status of a certified Work Ready Community means that Winn Parish has shown it has job candidates “in the pipeline” with high-demand skills as measured according to the National Career Readiness Certificate. It also shows that local employers care about hiring the best and brightest your region has to offer. This is demonstrated by potential employees’ successful performance on three Work Keys assessments which measure skills critical to success on the job, such as literacy, math, reading graphics. Undergoing these assessments is now free of charge to the person being tested.

The goal of the WIOA program is to put people to work. Ms. Goodman coordinates and supervises the offices in each of the six parishes. Her office is in Jena, but she spends most of her time on the road from one office to the next. The local representative is Charles Mixon, who is housed in the office of the Louisiana Workforce Commission at 101 West Boundary, Suite 101.

The WIOA program has multiple parts designed to get people to work. One is to assist persons with preparing a resume, completing an application for a job, helping get an interview set, calling the employer on behalf of the applicant. The office also holds job fairs for employers.

Another part of the program is assisting the prospective employees in overcoming barriers to their employment by getting education and/or training, helping the individual overcome barriers to employment. WIOA will assist a person in getting a driver’s license, getting training, completing education, getting a HISET diploma. A person receives assistance with whatever they need in terms of education or training to enable him or her to get a job. Applicants are assigned a case manager who assists them with everything. The case manager works with the local educational institutions to assist the applicant in obtaining the necessary knowledge and skills to go to work.

The office serves youth from age 16 through 24 who are not in school as well as any adult who is a citizen of the United States in a low-income situation in completing their education, getting training and finding a job. They just have to contact the office on West Boundary to take advantage of the available help, and then they can attend school, participate in job training, apply for jobs and go to work.

WIOC helps the dislocated worker who loses a job for reasons beyond his control, the displaced homemaker whose spouse leaves her without resources, spouses whose military reserve partners are called to active duty and must enter the workforce. The office works closely with all area Technical Colleges to get clients admitted to their programs and provide students with all the gear and supplies needed to take the programs. It also works with all high schools in the region to help students complete their high school diploma requirements. It gets students tutoring and helps them complete the HISET to get a diploma, obtain literacy training and remove other barriers to employment. The office has even sent clients to diesel truck driving school, after which they have immediately gone to work. It also provides financial literacy education for the clients to learn how to successfully manage their earnings and balance them with their spending.

The WIOA case manager follows the client from the day of signing up for the program until the day of entry into the work force. It even assists in some instances with employment-based training by paying one-half of the employee’s wages for the first six months on the job.

Each area is assessed on the success of the program by four measurements: the percentage of clients gaining credentials; the percentage of clients gaining measurable skills; the percentage of clients remaining employed in the second quarter after gaining employment; and the percentage of clients remaining employed in the fourth quarter after gaining employment. The office is supervised by the LaSalle Community Action Association, the board which sets the goals for Area 60. 

Once all audience questions were answered and announcements made, the meeting was adjourned with the Rotary motto, “Service above Self!”

By Brad Dison

Ronald Hughes was a novice California attorney whose first trial was approaching quickly.  He was defending a woman named Leslie Van Houten in a multiple murder trial.  Three other defendants had their own attorneys.  Ronald needed a good suit for the trial.  In May of 1970, Hollywood movie studio MGM decided to auction off movie props, many from the golden age of Hollywood, which they figured they would not need for future films.  The props had been kept in climate-controlled storage for decades.  Ronald watched as noteworthy items brought high prices and probably questioned whether he would be able to afford anything at all.  Finally, the lone item he had been waiting for was on the auction block.  It was a man’s suit worn by Spencer Tracy in the 1960 film Inherit the Wind.  The auctioneer opened the bids on the suit and the room fell silent.  As the auctioneer peered around the room, only one person in the audience seemed interested.  Ronald bid $5.00 on the suit and won it.  Ronald was uninterested that the suit was worn in a film, he was interested because the suit was cheap and in his size.

On July 15, 1970, the trial for which Ronald bought the $5 suit began.  The trial was fraught with disruptions from members of Leslie’s family, many of whom were eventually banned from the courtroom.  Due to Ronald’s flamboyant courtroom demeanor, his long hair, long beard, the admission of his squalid living conditions (Ronald lived in a garage with holes in the roof and slept on a mattress on the floor), admission that he wore a $5 suit he purchased at an auction, and his admission to having used hallucinogenic drugs in the past, the press nicknamed him the “Hippie Lawyer.”  The trial dragged on for months.  Finally, on November 16, 1970, after 23 weeks of presenting evidence, the State of California rested its case against Leslie.  It was time for the defense attorneys to present their evidence. 

On November 19, the defense attorneys filed motions for the acquittal of the defendants on the grounds that the state had not presented sufficient evidence to convict them.  The state had presented more than 250 individual pieces of evidence, 73 photographs of the victims, and eyewitness testimony.    The judge rejected the motions for acquittal.  To everyone’s surprise, each of the defendant’s attorneys, including Ronald, stood in turn, and said, “the defense rests.”  The attorneys rested their case without calling a single witness in their defense.  Leslie and other members of her family yelled that they wanted to testify.  The prosecution and defense agreed to recess over the week of Thanksgiving to give both sides a chance to prepare closing arguments.  The trial was set to resume on Monday, November 30. 

When the trial resumed on that Monday morning, Ronald failed to show up.  After waiting an hour, the trial continued without Ronald.  He had been late before because he lacked proper transportation and was once arrested for outstanding traffic tickets.  When he failed to appear for court the following day, the judge ordered deputies to use all possible means to find Ronald and bring him to court.  The trial continued without him.  Deputies learned that Ronald had hitchhiked to the Los Padres National Forest for a Thanksgiving week camping trip.  Search parties scoured the area but found no trace of Ronald.  The defendants, including Ronald’s client Leslie, were eventually convicted of murder.  On March 29, the jury returned death penalty verdicts against Leslie and the other defendants.  On the same day, two trout fishermen found Ronald’s body in a knee-deep creek.  His head was wedged between two large rocks.  Conspiracy theorists and even some of Leslie’s family members concluded that the father of the family had Ronald killed although a cause of death was never determined.  Investigators speculated that Ronald drowned during a rainstorm which caused flash flooding.  However, the possibility that members of Leslie’s family had killed Ronald was not beyond the realm of belief.  You see, the family who disrupted the courtroom proceedings was referred to as the Manson family.  The father of the family was Charles Manson.          

Sources:

1.     The Los Angeles Times, May 4, 1970, p.4.
2.     The Sacramento Bee, November 17, 1970, p.6.
3.     Santa Cruz Sentinel, November 18, 1970, p.7.
4.     The Peninsula Times Tribune, November 19, 1970, p.1.
5.     Concord Transcript, November 30, 1970, p.2.
6.     The Hanford Sentinel, December 2, 1970, p.1.
7.     The Los Angeles Times, March 30, 1971, p.3.
8.     The Sacramento Bee, April 1, 1971, p.77.
9.  https://www.hollywood-memorabilia.com/mgm-auction-1970-costumes-props/

Paul Travis Russell
May 18, 1954 — May 21, 2023
Black Lake – A time of remembrance for Paul Russell will be held on Friday, May 26 from 4-9 pm at the Blanchard-St. Denis Funeral Home. A eulogy service will be held at 7 pm in the funeral home chapel.

Delphine Jackson
September 12, 1963 – May 17, 2023
Arrangements TBA

Mary Demery
July 4, 1949 – May 13, 2023
Service: Wednesday, May 24 at 2 pm at Kingdom Hall, located at 1645 Breazeale Springs St. in Natchitoches

Ethel M Sarpy
November 20, 1934 – May 19, 2023
Arrangments TBA

Joshua M Howard
March 24, 1980 – May 20, 2023
Service: Saturday, May 27 at 11 am at St. Paul Baptist Church in Bermuda

The Winnfield City Council acted at its May 9 meeting on its longstanding policy of property condemnation by setting a 60-day timeframe for four property owners to take action on sites while tabling action on a fifth as that situation is reviewed.

The first, Timothy Blakely, spoke on his own behalf, explaining that they had purchased two adjacent properties with the intent of tearing down one to provide additional land space for the second.  However, he said he is a disabled veteran and his wife is also disabled so the work progress is slow as they are doing it themselves.  Their home is on Allen Street and the demolition project is adjacent on South St. John Street.  The council agreed to another 60 days.

Attorney Jonathan McDow represented the next three cases, those being properties of Julius Camp, David D. and Kathy M. Brown and Reba Teresa Thomas Miller.  He gave a report for each and presented paperwork to city attorney Herman Castete.  The city attorney gave a brief summary of the process to council members, showing the start-to-finish time from condemnation to clearance is not as quick as might seem expected.  The council also allowed 60 more days on these.

McDow also reported on the fifth property, that belonging to Constance Meadore.  He said the property owner had not yet replied to his inquiries.  Members voted to table action while the matter is reviewed.

In other business, the council agreed to dissolve the city’s contract with Chad Parker and to further review a proposal from Institute for Building Technology & Safety (IBTS) as a provider of building and electrical service inspections.  Speaking for IBTS, Joseph Migues told the council that Parker had cited too few inspection orders to continue his service.

Migues said he was in Natchitoches one day when a Winnfield call came in and he completed that inspection the same day.  Similarly, he’d conducted 17 or 18 inspections in a timely fashion.  The company conducts a full range of inspection services, including new construction, renovation and code inspections.

The council also approved Ordinance 2 of 2023 which takes into the city limits the property of the Winnfield Animal Clinic on Hwy 167 north.  The target is to bring in all properties on both sides of the highway up to the Hwy 156 (Calvin Road) intersection.  This will allow the city access to available grant funds for sewer line extensions for those properties.

Winnfield City Council took action at a short meeting May 9 with three of five members.  From left are Teresa Phillips (Dist. 5). Mayor Gerald Hamms. Ada Hall (Dist. 2), Erikia Breda (District 1), city clerk Katina Smith and city attorney Herman Castete.  Absent were Chiquita Caldwell (Dist. 3) and Matt Miller (Distr. 4).

Dodson, the town some may consider just a “speed trap half way between Winnfield and Jonesboro on Highway 167,” actually has quite a history, evidenced at Winnfield Rotary Club’s meeting May 10, 2023. Long-time Rotarian and Dodson native, Mickey Simmons, was interviewed about historical Dodson and its “heyday” by Rotarian Bob Holeman.

Simmons related that Dodson began as a community about 1860, a little before the beginning of the Civil War, when a man named Reeks settled there. The railroad which was run through the area a few years later resulted in growth of the population around the depot to serve those who brought agricultural products to be transported to other markets by train. The name originally planned for the community was Lena, but It was discovered another Lena, Louisiana, already existed. It was then named Dodson, after the last name of the engineer who ran the train. However, Dodson was not formally a municipality until 1901.

In comparison, Winnfield was established as a municipality and the parish seat in 1852. Thus, the old tale that Dodson was considered for the parish seat cannot be true, although there may have been some discussion of moving the parish seat to Dodson when it was thriving and had a population between 2000 and 2500.

Two rather unusual things about Dodson noted by Simmons are that it has no cemetery, and it is home to the only “mountain” in Winn Parish called Doc Cole’s Mountain. located west of the railroad tracks but within the city limits.

What is seen today as one proceeds on Highway 167 through Dodson is not what made up the community of Dodson in earlier days. Most of the businesses, stores, offices, homes and streets which made up Dodson lay east of what is now Hwy 167. At the same time, Gansville was a thriving community, as was Winona. The three spread out so they almost ran into one another. Both Dodson and Gansville hosted a fair and horse races in their heyday. In fact, Gansville was the location of the first Milam & Sons business, and the Milam family then bought property in the Dodson community.

The “town” buildings of Dodson in the earliest days included a medical building, as Dodson had four doctors at one time. Many children, including Mr. Simmons and his brother Harry, were born in the clinic building in Dodson. In addition to a municipal building, there were stores and a café, the home of Dodson State Bank, and an office for the Dodson Times, the local newspaper which printed its last edition in about 1928.

Just south of this area, Mr. Jones and Mr. Milam developed a residential neighborhood, the Jones and Milam addition, where the first brick building in town, the Dodson School, was built. The first principal of Dodson’s school was Charlie Shell, a great uncle of Jan Shell Beville, who always wore a black suit, a black shirt and a black bowtie, and was never seen without a tie. The school remains in that same location today, although the original school building was destroyed in 1939 or 1940 by a gas explosion related to new heaters that had been recently installed in the school. One of Simmons’ childhood friends lived in the neighborhood, and said that, when he and his family heard the explosion, his father said, “the Japs have attacked! Go get my shotgun!”

Mr. Jones, the grandfather of Kenneth Hightower, had a store in town which was thriving even before the advent of the railroad. He moved his store to the area of the railroad depot, and it became even more prosperous. Thus, when he and Mr. Milam developed Jones and Milam addition to the town, he built the huge ramshackle house one can now see from the highway.

The town came into its own when the Louisiana Lumber Company discovered Dodson and its stands of timber and brought its sawmill to town. This is when it peaked in population and industry. Once it had cut all the marketable timber, however, the company left town and moved on to other forested locations. Almost at once, the town died, its population dwindling from 2000 to about 400 at the time Simmons was a boy growing up in Dodson.

Eventually, the businesses in “downtown Dodson” were no more, and the buildings were left uninhabited. A man who was planning to build a house in Winnfield purchased the buildings which made up the downtown and tore them down to salvage the brick during Mr. Simmons’s boyhood. Although he managed to move the salvaged brick to his lot in Winnfield, when he discovered how much the labor to erect the house would cost, he gave up on the scheme and let the brick sit where it was. It seems some of it may still be left here in Winnfield somewhere.

Despite the small number of people still there, Simmons was able to name many who grew up in Dodson and went on to become very successful in the wider world. Two brothers with whom he played as a child became professional athletes. One played pro football with the San Diego team, then the New York Jets, and finally the Detroit Lions. After his football career, he worked for Ford Motor Company in Detroit until retirement. His brother was drafted by and played for the Baltimore Orioles, but hurt his shoulder and left the game. He was later recruited by New York City’s community college system to teach physical education for many years. This friend was inducted into the Grambling Athletic Hall of Fame. There was a Stovall family in Dodson, two of whom played on LSU’s undefeated 1908 football team. The famous Jerry Stovall, who played pro ball for the St. Louis Cardinals and was head football coach at LSU, was a member of this same Dodson family.

Dr. Paul Peters came from Dodson. Another Dodson native went into the U. S. Air Force after completing a degree at Tech, helped design a famous weapon system, and then helped design the first computer made by IBM. A son of Dr. Tolbert who practiced medicine in Dodson for many years followed his father into medicine and became the first board-certified pediatrician in Monroe.

When asked about the “Great Dodson Train Wreck,” Simmons related the following story: “Around about Big Creek where the mill is, there was a train derailment once upon a time. Three boxcars full of cargo, two with Gold Medal flour and one with evaporated milk, overturned and lay in place overnight. A local guy was hired as watchman, and when the company officials showed up the next morning, they found only two cases of milk and one of flour left in the cars.”
The Rotary meeting was adjourned, as customary, with its motto, “Service above Self!”

Date: 5-7-23
Name: Delois Williams 
Address: Winnfield, LA
Race: Black
Sex: Female 
Age: 42
Charge: Theft (by fraud), Direct contempt of court 

Date: 5-9-23
Name: Martin Roberts Sr
Address: Winnfield, LA
Race: White 
Sex: Male 
Age: 43
Charge: Direct contempt of court 

Date: 5-10-23
Name: Courtland Turner 
Address: Winnfield, LA
Race: Black
Sex: Male 
Age: 21
Charge: Simple Battery (surrendered) 

Date: 5-14-23
Name: Miranda Fountain 
Address: Winnfield, LA
Race: Black 
Sex: Female 
Age: 25
Charge: Disturbing the peace 

This information has been provided by a law enforcement agency as public information. Persons named or shown in photographs or video as suspects in a criminal investigation or arrested and charged with a crime have not been convicted of any criminal offense and are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

Date: 5-7-23
Name: Jennifer A Ponds 
Address: Tullos, LA 
Race: White
Sex: Female 
Age: 45
Charge: Theft, Direct contempt of court

Date: 5-7-23
Name: Martin Roberts Sr
Address: Winnfield, LA
Race: White
Sex: Male 
Age: 44
Charge: Failure to appear (Lasalle Parish) 

Date: 5-10-23
Name: Courtland Turner
Address: Winnfield, LA 
Race: Black 
Sex: Male 
Age: 21
Charge: Direct contempt of court 

Date: 5-10-23
Name: Tanisha K Washington 
Address: Winnfield, LA
Race: Black 
Sex: Female 
Age: 43
Charge: Intent to distribute, Possession of schedule 2, Possession of paraphernalia, False information 

This information has been provided by a law enforcement agency as public information. Persons named or shown in photographs or video as suspects in a criminal investigation, or arrested and charged with a crime, have not been convicted of any criminal offense and are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

The Bilieau Farms Rally Roosters are the champions of the Winn Parish Dixie Youth 9/10 year old league with a 12-1 record!

Winn’s top graduating seniors…39 in all…were invited to a reception at Central Louisiana Technical Community College the evening of May 8.  The invitation did not come due to their athletic prowess, their oratory skill or their social grace, said Supt. Alfred Simmons, but due solely to their academic achievement. 

Each senior has maintained at least a 3.5 GPA throughout their four years of high school.  Many, the superintendent said, have maintained an even higher average.  As an aside, Simmons pointed out that many of these scholars had also excelled in sports and other non-academic endeavors.  As the students leave Winn to pursue their chosen avenue, he challenged them to do their best to be good representatives of their families and of Winn Parish.

Atlanta High School principal Wendy Miller lauded the students for persevering as they worked towards their personal goals.  WSHS principal Dr. Jane Griffin noted that local students traveled and competed all over the state and country, making Winn proud.

The room on the Huey P. Long Campus was filled with family, friends and educators as the students entered in procession at 6 p.m.  They enjoyed a brief program with the presentation of plaques, followed by photo opportunities then a social time with refreshments.

Of the 39 honorees, three are from Atlanta High School, ten from Calvin High School, five from Dodson High School and 21 from Winnfield Senior High School.  They are:

Atlanta:  Zaibriana McLaren. M’Khya Mitchell and Ella Price.

Calvin:  Dillon Caldwell, Samantha Cullen, Kate Dupree, John Bradley Griffin, Jacob Harford, Addisyn James, Remington Lee, Abigail McCarty, Gavin Musgrove and Gunnar Yocum.

Dodson:  Keyla Garcia, Summer Gorham, Mary Gresham, Trenten Howard and Hunter Vines.

Winnfield Senior High:  Karly Avant, Gracee Barton, Maggie Bruce, Gracelyn Chevallier, Olivia Files, Leyton Gardner, Harley Grantadams, Bethany Gray, Annie Heard, Addison Jacobsen,Chloe James, Brady Johnson, Samuel Jones, Alyssa Patterson, Allison Phelps, Lauren Poole, Micah Simmons, Joy So, Parker Sonnier, Kaden Victor and Chloe Whisonant.

C.W. “Jack” Jones has a military family story that the media likes to talk about.  His parents Rufus and Nena Jones had eight sons, and while one died in infancy, five of the remaining boys served in World War II.

His father worked a 40-acre farm with two horses, raising corn, cotton, peanuts, peas, and sugar cane. They also raised cows, hogs, and chickens, which they killed for meat.  The senior Jones, a carpenter, also got $20 a month from the state for serving as a fire warden, responding when the fire tower spotted a blaze in the nearby forest.  “Poppa would fight fires.  He had a flap and a fire rake and that was it.  We also made crossties when farming was slow.”

When Jones started school at Atlanta, there were separate elementary and high schools.  Odelle Durham was one of his early teachers but it may have been English teacher Miss Parish (who became Mrs. J.W. Barr) who made the biggest impression on this young scholar.  “I was a pretty good student and made good grades under her.  I was at Atlanta through all 11 grades, graduating in 1942 when I was 17.”

Out of school, Jones worked at Western Auto under A.W. Berdon.  When he turned 18 (Nov. 15, 1943), he registered for the draft and in January 1944,  reported to Fort Humbug in Shreveport.  “I wanted to be in the Army like my other brothers but they told me you are in the Navy and sent me back home.”

It wasn’t until March 1944 that Jones got the call to actually report for service.  It was back to Fort Humbug, then San Diego by train for boot camp.  “I’d never been out of Winn Parish before.  We were in San Diego for eight weeks training but never got leave so I never saw the ‘Big City.’  But the plains and mountains we’d seen along the way were impressive.  During boot camp, I mastered all the other skills but never made swimmer.  It was good enough because they put me on the USS Miami, a cruiser headed for Pearl Harbor, anyway.”

Jones was at Pearl Harbor through the month of May, cleaning up old planes and other wreckage from the attack two years earlier.  Despite the romance of “Hawaii” today, back then there was little development to see other than the military presence on the islands.

He then boarded the USS Houston and crossed the Pacific to the Caroline Islands, just north of the equator.  There, he got aboard a barge that transported men to the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, the largest ship he’d ever seen.  They were in the middle of the ocean so he boarded the Enterprise by way of a rope ladder up the side. There he’d stay for the rest of the war.

“I was a Seaman Second Class.  I became a Seaman First Class, then later was ranked as an Aviation Ordnanceman Third Class.  First thing they did was assign me sleeping quarters.  I had various duties before being assigned to the Aviation Ordnance Department.  There, different divisions had specific duties.  I loaded ammunition and bombs onto planes.  We had SBD dive-bombers, TBF Avengers which were torpedo planes and F4F Wildcat and F6F Hellcat fighters.  We had to climb up on the wings to load the 50-calibre guns and when loaded we placed masking tape over the barrel so the pilot would know the guns were ready to fire.”

At first, the fighters flew mostly daytime sortees.  In telling his story, the veteran is still impressed that the 50-calibre machine guns were mounted in the wings and the guns had to be synchronized to fire through the plane’s rotating propellers.  One of his duties was making up the rolls of shells and he said every fifth shell had to be a tracer so the pilot could check his effectiveness.  The bombs were either 500- or 1000-pound bombs and it took two men working together to load and arm them.  They were hooked to a trigger wire so that when the pilot dropped a bomb, the detonator was primed.

The Winnfield boy saw his first battle action in the Marshall Islands in what came to be called “The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot” due to the tremendous loss of Japanese aircraft.  Some 500 ships in Task Force 58 covered an area 75 miles across, with about 10 carriers, small and large, with their payload of planes and firepower protected at center by circling rings of battleships, cruisers, and destroyers.

“When we went in to attack, the enemy wanted to get to our carriers.  But they had to get past our defense first.  The task force had about 950 planes.  The Japanese had about 450 aboard carriers with another 200 land-based aircraft.  Our planes were going out all the time.  We got the planes loaded and refueled while the pilots went in to rest and debrief.  Then they’d take off again.  There were too many planes topside for them to use the entire length of the flight deck (809 feet) to take off.  There were two catapults at the front of the deck.  The pilots would rev-up their engines to full thrust before the planes were released by the catapult.

Jones admitted that it was “an exciting but scary time for a little country boy” as the Enterprise began its missions, including the invasion of the Marshall Islands, attack of Saipan and Battle of Philippines Seas.  “It was intense but each of the 2500 men aboard had a job to do and we had to do it in the time available.  Success depended on everyone doing their specific job, knowing that the enemy was out there somewhere and you didn’t know when they might attack.  But we didn’t have time to worry.  We had a job to do and we got it done!”

The Enterprise had been involved in major battles earlier in the war before Jones joined the crew, like Midway and Coral Sea in 1942, when Japan had expanded its offensive as far as it would.  After the Marshall Islands, the Enterprise (nicknamed the “Big-E,” said Jones) was ordered back to Pearl Harbor for repairs, refitting and a camouflage job.  By late 1944, the carrier was back in action in the invasion of the Volcano and Bonin islands chains and by early October sailed into the waters of the Palau Islands.  There they joined up with other carrier units.  Jones observed that the USS Enterprise and the USS Saratoga were the only Pacific theater aircraft carriers to survive the entire war.  (Only the USS Ranger had that distinction on the Atlantic side).  At this point in the war, newly constructed carriers were coming into service to bolster the American fleet.

The Enterprise was part of the strike force against Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Formosa and the Philippines.  After reprovisioning in the Ulithi Islands, the ship joined the American invasion of Leyte Gulf in October 1944.  There were four or five days of intensive fighting in which the carrier USS Princeton was sunk.

“After the Leyte Gulf Sea Battle ended, the Japanese began using their most efficient weapon on the American fleet, the kamikaze.  We were ordered to stay at general quarters at all times.  During the invasion we were on-ready, day and night, never pulling off our shoes or clothing.  We ate K-rations, not the good mess hall food.  I even remember spaghetti being served out of buckets.  We never knew when the kamikazes were going to hit.”  In late October, the Enterprise experienced a “near miss” from a suicide pilot.

A return to Pearl Harbor on Dec. 6, 1944 was welcomed by the crew and it ushered in a new era of their warfare.  “We sailed back out on Dec. 24.  I remembered it was Christmastime and I thought of home again.  We returned to the Philippines with an air group specially trained for night carrier operations.  We were not exempt from day activities but our mission now involved the harassment of the enemy at night.  The carrier swept the sea north of Luzon and the waters of the China Sea, hitting shore targets and shipping from Formosa to the French Indo-China area.  We also covered raids day and night on Tokyo during February 1945.  Then the ship took on its latest objective, the Marine landing on Iwo Jima on Feb. 19.  We remained in the area until about March 9.  Over 5,900 Marines and 23,000 Japanese lost their lives in a land area less than 12 square miles.”

On March 18, Jones came to understand that God was watching over him.  One of his helpers from Drew, Mississippi, was not so fortunate.  A kamikaze came in at such a shallow angle that the bomb did not explode…the detonator was located in its nose and the bomb landed on its belly.  A fire broke out and  Jones’ mate died from his burns several days later.  That night or early the next morning, the Franklin was hit by torpedo planes, with 700 fatalities and 265 others injured, leaving it without power, to be pulled out of harm’s way by the Enterprise.

“But several days later, our ship was damaged and we had to return to Uilithi for a week of repairs,” said Jones.  We returned to action in early April, when kamikaze planes were standard procedure for the enemy.  We were at battle stations on May 14, 1945,  off of Okinawa.  Action of enemy planes had begun early in the day, around 0700 hours.  A Japanese pilot in a bomb-laden Zero broke from the clouds above and placed his plane on the deck of the Enterprise, just behind the forward elevator.”

The plane disintegrated but the bomb, the engine and the body of the pilot continued forward into the elevator pit.  This time, the bomb did explode, sending the 15-ton elevator at least 400 feet into the air (some pilot accounts put it as high as 1000 feet).  Newsweek magazine carried the report and picture in May, 1945. Amazingly, only 14 men were killed and 68 injured but the carrier’s deck was buckled and warped while the elevator and one catapult were knocked out of commission, as was the ship.  The Enterprise and crew headed to Pearl Harbor two days later, then to Bremerton, Washington, for extensive repairs.

“The war wasn’t over but it was over for us.  On June 7, 1945, I got my first leave to visit home for a while.  We were leaving the Puget Sound Naval Yard in September, 1945 when the Japanese officially surrendered.  The Enterprise with its crew was a warship without a war.”

Services of this historic carrier were not complete, however.  It picked up 1,149 liberated POWs at Pearl Harbor and steamed through the Panama Canal to New York where the crew, with Jones, stood on the deck in a naval parade of 47 ships passing before President Harry Truman on Navy Day, October 27, 1945.  Soon, Jones’ war would be over.  He disembarked in New York and went to Norfolk, VA.  On Nov. 13, 1945, he was discharged…though he had to report to the New Orleans Naval Personnel Center before it was official on February 2, 1946.

“I didn’t go sight-seeing or anything,” the veteran said about his time after the war.  “I came home as quick as I could.”  Unlike some who said they picked up where they’d left off, Jones said his time at war had taken its toll.  This country boy worked through this trauma, under a doctor’s care, for a year or so, working odd jobs before he got his feet back on the ground.

When he got himself back together, Jones became associated with Milam’s Department Store, first driving a delivery truck, then serving as a clerk.  Then he went to Milam’s Furniture Store.  Finally he’d take a postal exam and would go on to work for the USPS for over 26 years, retiring November, 1985.

Describing himself as having been “raised in a church” (Sardis Baptist), he has been active in churches since his return.  He became a deacon at South Winnfield Baptist Church in 1956 where he directed Sunday School, Training Union and music. Perhaps recalling God’s protection aboard the USS Enterprise, he said he surrendered to the ministry 50 years ago (February 1962).  Ordained at Laurel Heights Baptist Church, he’s served as pastor at Sardis, Union Hill, Yankee Springs, Hebron, Shady Grove, Zion, Friendship and Trinity.  He’s filled a number of pulpits since retiring.

As to the romance in his life, Jones explained that before the war, he had met Moeice Lashley.  “During the war, we’d communicate some back and forth, but it wasn’t often.  It was delayed or cut up with all the military censorship. You only got mail when you went into a port for repair.  When I returned, we started dating.  That led to us getting married Dec. 21, 1947.”

They have two daughters, Joyce Yvonne Jones and Paula Gail Jones.