What’s Darla Doing?
BOBBY ARDOIN
St. Landry Now.com Editor
Darla Montgomery has always been fascinated with people and their stories, so now it’s apparently time for her to continue absorbing that, except in a different way.
The retired television anchor told the Opelousas Noon Rotary Club on Tuesday that she is considering a potential second career as a screenwriter or perhaps a novelist, as she transitions from a 33-year career that was often filled with strict deadlines and pressure.
“I would really like to write. I’ve always had ideas for stories and the types of ideas that would maybe make a great movie. That hasn’t changed. However right now, there are still a bunch of things that I want to do, like read novels, but everything right now is really unfinished,” Montgomery told the Rotarians.
Montgomery, who finished high school in Opelousas, has admittedly acquired numerous potential characters and fictional plots for movies or books, after more than three decades of interviewing, reporting and then filtering stories obtained from other television reporters who were out in the field, gathering firsthand information.
What Montgomery said she doesn’t plan to do is get back in front of a studio camera or work again in the television news business, which even in the small, Lafayette-area market, is controlled predominantly by large corporations.
KLFY in Lafayette, Montgomery said, is owned by NextStar, which additionally owns about 250 stations.
The other two television news affiliates in Lafayette, are scheduled to be sold sometime during the final quarter of 2025, to Grey Media, according to multiple news reports in August.
Grey Media after the acquisitions of KATC and KADN, will own about as many stations as NextStar, reports have stated.
Montgomery said she has witnessed the proliferation of corporate television media and other changes in the news business, during a career that she said, “went by in a flash.”
That acquisition trend by corporate media, is not necessarily a beneficial one, Montgomery added.
“One thing I don’t miss right now is the stress,” said Montgomery, who once experienced a medical emergency sitting in the anchor’s seat as the early evening newscast began to unfold.
Although Montgomery graduated from college with a degree in broadcast communications, she still seems somewhat surprised at how she began her career.
Initially Montgomery said she was working at KLFY as an office manager, away from the reporting desk, when one day she was handed a microphone and told she was leaving that job and beginning a new one that involved handling interviews.
“I was told that I was going out and into the field. I wasn’t sure whether I could do that, but I was told that it didn’t really matter, that I would figure it out,” Montgomery said.
Montgomery hit the streets and began working interviews and setting up for street corner camera segments, which were evidently easy for her.
“People are the same everywhere. They enjoy talking about things. My career started there and then went to reporting and then as an anchor for the morning show and finally the evening news. (As an anchor) you were required to bring your A-game every day,” Montgomery added.
One life-changing experience, Montgomery said, was her time reporting in Haiti, where she learned that sometimes happiness in a Third World Country occurs even though the inhabitants there have nothing.
The incident that probably affected her most, Montgomery said, was when she witnessed villages that were seemingly transformed when for the first time, cold water was brought down from mountainous regions through newly-installed plastic pipes.
Montgomery said she is always available to help with the family pie-making business from a shop which operates on East Grolee Street in Opelousas and assist with her mother, Patricia Hertzock, a career educator who loves to dance and recently performed some of her moves during her 90th birthday celebration.
What has continued to matter for her personally, Montgomery pointed out, is her continued association with others.
“I’ve always been a people person and I have enjoyed the stories others have to tell. This (Opelousas) area has always been a great resource for that. We have so many different people here, but we all seem to get along,” Montgomery pointed out.
