Courthouse maintenance employee eyes retirement

Story and Photos By COLIN MURPHEY
A familiar face around the St. Mary Parish courthouse will be saying goodbye soon to a facility that he has worked tirelessly to maintain for over 20 years.
And while it might be easy to overlook the work done to maintain the building by longtime maintenance worker Wilfred Chauvin, everyone at the courthouse has benefitted from his day-to-day routine in some form or another.
From sweeping the parking lot at 6 a.m. every morning, to sharpening the blade of a lawn mower to simply changing light bulbs, Chauvin has always been where he was needed to be to make sure parish staff had what they needed to do their jobs.
Chauvin is retiring after 20 years on the job next month but he did say, if he finds retirement too boring, he might come back on a limited basis. The lifelong Franklin resident said, while he might miss the work, he was looking forward to retirement.
“I’m gonna take some time and see if I like it,” Chauvin said. “If I don’t like it, maybe I’ll go try something else. This was something I loved doing. It was never stale. There was always something different to do. I liked helping people out.”
Chauvin said he hadn’t made any immediate plans for his retirement but he did say he would like to take some time to think about his experience at the courthouse and the people he had met along the way.
“I’m going to sit back and take some time to reflect a little bit,” Chauvin said. “I wanna make sure I didn’t forget anything. I do everything by memory so I want to make sure there isn’t anything here I forgot to do. I’m just gonna sit back and relax and see if I like it. If it gets boring, maybe I’ll come back part time. If not, I’ll go find something else. Something different.”