In 1982, I joined the staff at Deep South Communications in Baton Rouge, which included a position with the Louisiana Travel Promotion Association (LTPA). I worked there about two years, editing several magazines and newsletters.
I was named Director of Public Relations and Membership Services for the LTPA, which meant taking a lot of pictures and attending a lot of meetings, receptions, and special events around the state.
Some of the publications I edited while at Deep South Communications were the LTPA Newsletter (above), the Louisiana Motor Transport Association monthly magazine, and the This Week in Baton Rouge weekly tourist magazine. The last one required me to visit a Baton Rouge area restaurant every week and write up a "critique" of the food and surroundings. Since my main diet at that time consisted of hamburgers and french fries, that was a real challenge when visiting some of the capital city's more famous culinary destinations.
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So during the day I worked at a printing company writing up copy for all these magazines, went out and took pictures to put in all these magazines, and often at night I attended all kinds of tourist promotion gatherings, mostly lobbying efforts for state legislators. On many weekends I went to various places throughout the state and set up trade show booths for conventions and what not.
I stood in the booths all day Saturday and Sunday and handed out brochures. At the end of the trade show, I knocked down the booth, put it all back into its carrying bags, and headed home to start the week again on Monday morning. Home at that time was in a one room studio apartment in Baton Rouge.
Being with the La. Travel Promotion Association was a great learning experience and a lot of fun, since I got to go statewide to take pictures of tourist groups, attend Motor Coach Tour Bus association meetings, and do interviews with owners of tourist attractions, like the Mt. Hope Plantation House on Highland Road. I made slide presentations to show at meetings. Sometimes I was called upon to be "in the picture" when out on photoshoots at various locations.
I met a lot of interesting people, took a lot of interesting photographs (trucks!), and got to go to a lot of parties. However working all the time, I started burning out. I eventually got a job editing a newspaper near Shreveport and moved to north Louisiana.
It turned out that this was not the first time I had done a slide show for the La. Travel Promotion Association. Eight years earlier I had put together a slide presentation showcasing the tourist attractions of west St. Tammany Parish. That show had been given in 1974 in Slidell for a statewide LTPA meeting. I was representing the St. Tammany Fair Association for that event, and the slide show was a general overview of scenic and family fun destinations throughout the western half of the parish.
Before the St. Tammany Parish Tourist and Convention Commission was established by the police jury, the St. Tammany Fair Association was doing promotional work on a regular basis spotlighting tourism opportunities. One of those outreaches was the "Discover St. Tammany Tour" for regional media representatives.
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