The friendship stuck: Morgan City's Class of 1966 reunites

In 1966, the country was teetering on the edge of big changes. Maybe the country was even going a little crazy.

More and more young men were being shipped to Vietnam. More and more students on college campuses were beginning to protest the war. More and more young people were turning on, tuning in and dropping out in counterculture cradles such as San Francisco.

But when members of the Morgan City High Class of 1966 met for their 50th reunion Saturday at Acadiana Grill, momentous societal changes were not what they remembered. Their minds turned instead to a small, close-knit community where the education they received helped them go places, often faraway places. They remembered Morgan City and its high school as places where friends remain friends.

“When we’re in high school, we don’t envision what we’re going to be at 60,” said Carmen Guarisco Freia, one of about 30 1966 graduates who came to the reunion.

“I’ve been blessed. I have two children. I’ve got grandchildren. But as far as these people here tonight, I think the only thing I knew that was going to be the same was our friendship. That I knew would stick. And it has. That was the best part.”

The home where Freia grew up was a gathering place for her friends.

“My father ran a restaurant here at the time, and after the football games, we gathered there and, if not there, at my home in Morgan City,” Freia said.

Josephine Duval Heuer moved to Morgan City from the New Orleans area in February 1964, near the end of her sophomore year. She transferred from Riverdale, an experimental all-girls school in Jefferson Parish.

“It was a big change, going from a big city to a smaller community,” Heuer said. “Everyone knew everyone else. They had grown up with each other from the time they were born, it seemed like. But they were also very welcoming to someone new in their community who had just come in in the middle of their sophomore year.”

Heuer was a member of the Tigerettes pep squad and made the All-State Choir.

“I didn’t just want to be there,” Heuer said. “I wanted to be involved.”

After graduation, she went to what is now the University of Louisiana at Monroe for a bachelor’s degree in clothing and textiles. She moved to Dallas, where she was in a department store’s executive program when she met her future husband. They moved to Minneapolis.

Chip Stansbury and Mike Audirsch traveled after graduation, too, and they think Morgan City High was a good launch pad.

“We had some fantastic kids and some fantastic teachers,” Audirsch said. “We had Mr. Louis Holmes, principal. As far as I was concerned he was one of the best principals I ever had. We thoroughly enjoyed going to Morgan City High. That’s why we love being a tiger.”

Stansbury dove into college prep courses in high school and thinks he got a good education at Morgan City.

“Morgan City High school prepared us for a wonderful career, a wonderful profession,” Stansbury said. “My freshman year of college was essentially repeating what I’d had in high school.”

Audirsch got a football scholarship to Tulane, but he said that didn’t work out. So, like Heuer, he went to what was then Northeast Louisiana State College in Monroe, where he played quarterback.

He went to work in the oilfield, joining Shell and living overseas for 15 years. He continued to travel the world after he came home to the states.

Stansbury went on to LSU and got a bachelor’s in electrical engineering and a master’s in nuclear engineering. After college, he worked on a nuclear plant for Brown & Root in Houston, then lived in Saudi Arabia for 7-1/2 years while working with Aramco.

Then it was back to the states to live in Austin, Texas, when his son was old enough for school. Stansbury went back to the Middle East later before returning to the states to live.

Events managed to intrude themselves in the lives of class members, sometimes happily, sometimes not.

Freia still remembers the date, May 3, when her brother returned from Vietnam in 1964.

In college, Heuer said, “I had some classmates my senior year that came back from Vietnam who were severely injured. And they would talk about their experiences there.”

Happier thoughts were the rule for the classmates who gathered Saturday. Heuer and her husband came down from Minnesota for the event.

“It’s south Louisiana,” Heuer said. “It’s an interesting, different part of the world as I tell my friends.

“We’re so fully Scandinavian. Morgan City is kind of the opposite. It’s wonderful, and I love coming down here. The things that I want to come down and see and experience are southern accents and really good food.”