Photograph: Patricia Mason-Guillory, executive director of the St. Landry Veterans Memorial tells the Parish Council that the Memorial Visitors Center will be named after Opelousas businessman Bobby Dupre. (Photograph by Bobby Ardoin.)
BOBBY ARDOIN
Editor/Consulting Writer
A proposed visitors center located at the St. Landry Veterans Memorial will be named after Opelousas businessman Bobby Dupre.
Parish Council members affirmed unanimously Wednesday night a request by Memorial executive director Patricia Mason-Guillory to name the facility after Dupre, who also donated the property for the original Memorial project in 2011.
Dupre did not attend the Council meeting, but several Dupre’s friends, family members, business associates and Memorial project volunteer workers attended the presentation by Mason-Guillory.
Mason-Guillory told council members as well as the large crowd who attended the meeting that Dupre had provided the first $25,000 of funding in order to get the Visitor’s Center project started.
Parish president Jessie Bellard announced last year that the parish government intends to donate another $100,000 towards the completion of the visitors center that Mason-Guillory said is needed at the Memorial site in order to store records and provide a place for artifacts.
Cost estimates for the Bobby Dupre Visitors Center completion have been as high as $250,000.
Mason-Guillory also recalled how the 2.5 acre location for the Veterans Memorial was presented to her by Dupre.
“We had been trying to make something happen, but we just couldn’t get there. We had a vision (for the Memorial), but we needed a place to put it. (Dupre) called me and told me to drive home on Guilbeau Road and look to my left when I got to the highway, because that’s where we could locate the Memorial,” Mason-Guillory told the Council.
Mason-Guillory has said the visitor’s center costs will originate from donations.
Bellard told the Council that the money from the parish government will come from American Rescue Act revenues.
Eventually Bellard said the visitor’s center project will be completed. “We’re going to make it happen,” said Bellard.
