From the editor: Director looks back on first Shrimp and Petroleum Festival

Remember the first day on your first job? You had jitters, if you were lucky. Maybe it was even nerve-wracking.
Now imagine your first job straight out of school is also the biggest entertainment event in the city where you grew up.
That was what Darby Isham experienced this year as the director of the Louisiana Shrimp and Petroleum Festival. Isham was hired by the festival board Jan. 15, the month after she graduated a semester early from Louisiana State University.
“They were looking for someone new and young and I guess I fit their profile,” Isham said in an interview last week.
How’d she do?
Isham said it’s possible the 2015 edition of the 80-year-old festival set an attendance record. Police Chief James Blair, who has been with the Morgan City Police Department 30 years, said, “Everything went beautiful other than the few little minor arrests we had.”
One of the visiting festival queens was involved in a minor traffic accident. Some of the festival organizers had keys to the historic Second Street home that serves as the festival operation’s headquarters but lacked the code to the security system.
“A few neighbors probably had a wake-up alarm the Friday morning of the festival,” Isham said.
But Blair shared a common opinion when he said the 2015 Shrimp and Petroleum Festival was among the smoothest he’s ever worked. Maybe, Isham said, she got a hand from the late Lee Delaune, who was festival director for a decade.
“Maybe that’s to say that Mr. Lee had something to do with it upstairs,” Isham said, “and he wanted to make things as easy as possible for me.”
Delaune’s death in September 2014 created the opening that Isham now fills. At the time, she was still three months short of her LSU graduation.
The daughter of a Coast Guard family, Isham was born in Port Arthur, Texas, lived briefly in Michigan and then came to Louisiana when she was 3 because her father was assigned to Morgan City.
Isham attended Morgan City High and went on to LSU with the idea of becoming a chemical engineer. But she didn’t like it and turned to a different sort of chemistry: wedding planning. Isham is currently planning her own December 2016 wedding.
She worked with a wedding planner in New Orleans for a time. She also got involved through her sorority with the Miss LSU pageant, first as advertising director, then director. Finally, she worked with the Louisiana Travel Promotion Association, which she describes as the private sector equivalent of government tourism boards.
“The stars definitely aligned because I thought about it before I graduated,” Isham remembered. “I said, ‘I could see myself working with the festival.’ I questioned a lot of people — you know, who’s in charge?”
After Isham a got the job, she wasn’t sure what the pace would be like.
“I was expecting it to be crazy hectic all the time and on festival weekend I wouldn’t sleep,” Isham said. “But I guess I did a lot of work in pre-planning, and I allowed everyone to do what their job was. …
“I was the new one, so it was much easier for me to let them do what they were supposed to do than to tell them what they were supposed to do.”
“They” included a large board, many members of which have served years in their positions, no doubt contributing to an easier transition. They’re divided into committees to handle aspects of the festival such as vendors, parking, and this year, music, which Delaune had handled himself.
“That was a huge relief for the director position,” Isham said. “The music takes up a lot of time to begin with. You have to be there to watch the stage being set up and putting the bands on the stage. That may have been a reason my position wasn’t as hectic.”
Isham’s biggest accomplishment may have come before the festival began. She used a booklet to show past and potential sponsors what they’d get for their money if they renewed.
“Even though we’ve been around 80 years, I don’t think we have our membership and sponsorships where they’re supposed to be,” Isham said. “Basically, that’s what puts on the festival. Membership supports the day-to-day activities of the office, and sponsorship actually supports the festival.
“We had a little different program. They could see what they were going to get for their money. We almost doubled our sponsorship dollars for this year. To me, that speaks volumes for a business being able to see what they’re getting for their money.”
Some businesses even upgraded their sponsorships despite a soft economy.
“It was a blessing, I guess, that a lot of people in the community love the festival so much they saw the importance of giving a little more,” Isham said.
“You probably don’t realize it, but a lot of people, probably 50 or 75 percent of the people in the community, are directly or indirectly associated with the festival in some way, whether it be a cousin who was in it, a grandfather, a grandma who was in the pageant years ago, or a sister or a brother. So it’s pretty neat.”
What happens next Labor Day depends largely on how well the festival did financially this year. That won’t be known with certainty until later in the year.
The city wharf, currently undergoing repairs and renovation, and the new Main Street playground will change the look of the 2016 festival. When ideas are getting thrown around, Isham said, there’s talk about multiple music stages and sanitary arrangements more substantial than portable toilets.
“We’re talking about bringing back the Shrimp Cook-Off,” Isham said. “But we’re not sure if it’ll be separate from the festival or if we’ll try to bring it back during the festival. Those are things that we’re brainstorming. Nothing’s set in stone yet.”
This year, Isham did her duty by staying until the show ended.
“I actually cried on my way home Monday night after the festival because I didn’t want it to end,” she said.

This column was written by Bill Deckerm, managing editor of The Daily Review. Reach him at bdecker@daily-review.com.