Well,
you know you are getting old when someone gives you a lifetime
achievement award. It's actually a little embarrassing. I usually try to
stay in the background, behind the camera.
Most of my
life has been about interviewing other people, taking their pictures,
showcasing their contributions and accomplishments. So this award is
really about them, the people of St. Tammany Parish.
I
was recently recognized by the Cultural Arts Commission of St.
Tammany Parish with the President's Lifetime Achievement Award for 2021.
I've known Mike Cooper for years, when he was mayor of Covington, and
now is Parish President. I knew (and took many photos of) his dad Ernest
Cooper back in the 1970's.
The
group asked me to provide some background of my life, and when I
started compiling the list of things I have done, it kept getting longer
and longer. So I shortened it considerably and here is the press
release they sent out about this particular award. Click on the links in boldface for more information:
From the Cultural Arts Commission Facebook page:
"Our final featured recipient before the awards event tomorrow is Ron Barthet, Lifetime Achievement President’s Arts Award.
Ron Lamar Barthet was born in New Orleans, LA, and moved to Covington, LA in 1968. After attending Southeastern Louisiana University, he became editor of the Slidell Sentry News. He was named Associate News Editor at the Covington Daily News in 1972, and the following year Ron was promoted to editor of the Mandeville Banner, the successor to the Mandeville Bantam.
In his spare time, he
traveled across the parish, making copies of old faded photographs, in
an effort to preserve them. He would present to various civic
associations across the parish slide shows featuring hundreds of old
pictures, as well as aerial photographs he had taken on several flights over the area.
Ron
served as president of the historical society in 1977, and again in the
mid-1980's, and then again in 1997. He was elected to the board of
directors of the Art Association in 1975, and he was a founding member of the St. Tammany Press Club.
In 1984, he drew acartoon pictorial map of downtown Covington
to show where various portions of the first "Olde Towne Festival" would
be held, and the map was so popular that he has now drawn more than 70
additional "bird's eye view" mapsof communities across the South. He has produced maps for the annual ChefSoiree held by the Youth Service Bureau for more than 20 years.
Barthet has written several books, some science fiction, and he dabbles in poetry and songwriting, one song of which was named the “official song of Covington.” His books have spotlighted history, Cajun comedy, and imaginary festivals.
Between 2000 and 2014, he managed the St. Tammany Parish Public St. Tammany Parish Public School System's website. Now retired, he currently takes pictures and writes articles for his "Tammany Family" blog, a daily look at the people, places, history and scenic beauty of St. Tammany Parish."
-------------------- End of press release
As exhausting as all of that was above, there are a few things that I left out that deserve mentioning.
The SLU Radio Program
Jim Martel and I started the first radio program for Southeastern Louisiana University, and it was called "Campus Modulation."
WTGI Hammond radio station broadcasted it once a week. We played a few
songs and mostly read press releases from the college's public
information office. Now the university has its own radio station.
Audio Cassette Recordings
One
of the most demanding and least paid jobs I had was with an audio
recording company in Los Angeles. For just over a year in the
mid-1980's, I flew around the country tape recording speeches at a
variety of conventions, trade shows, professional seminars, etc. Then I
would immediately duplicate the speeches on cassette tapes and sell
convention attendees copies of the speech, as they were walking out of
the door of the meeting.
I
went to places like Orlando, Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, Los Angeles,
and Fairhope (AL), staying several days in each location, many times in
the fanciest hotel in town where the convention was being held. That
job, while enjoyable while I was doing it, required all my time and
paid very little money. I worked seven days a week, seldom got home for
more than a day, and there was a lot of heavy equipment cases hauling
around as well as late night plane flights. I had to give the job up
because I was digging myself into a financial hole.
Volunteer Audio Work
As
my expertise in audio recording expanded, I began volunteering on the
weekends to do audio duplication work for the "Kid's Jamboree"
television and radio show in Baton Rouge. They were expanding their
ministry into the Caribbean and needed someone to take the audio tracks
from prior television shows and convert them to 15 minute radio
programs. That was a time consuming process, but an enjoyable one.
During this time "Kid's Jamboree" bought the old Singing Waters summer
camp out in Holden, La., for its own summer kids program, and for a
while I was planning to move to Holden and live at the camp. That didn't
happen, but now the property is owned by John Schneider of the "Dukes of Hazard" fame, who has turned it into an independent film studio.
I also did volunteer audio work for Bethesda Cassette Library
in Covington, an operation run by Bill and Marie Knight who were
distributing cassette tapes of various religious teachings to their library members around the
world. I helped them print up their catalog, wrote an article about
them, and did some narrating on the tapes. One of the bigger projects
was tape-recording an audio version of the newly-published New American
Standard Bible (just the New Testament). Pronouncing some of those
Biblical names was a challenge.
For two years I did a taped interview show for WARB radio station in Covington. Each interview was about 30 minutes long, and the radio station played five minutes of it every day. Back then five minutes was a long time to listen to anything on the radio, so it worked out well. I interviewed a wide variety of people across the community, public officials, the postmaster, artists, business people, etc.
The Video Production
In 1996 I produced a two-hour documentary on the use of pesticides
in the public school system. Many people were interviewed, including
several state level experts, and the legislative effort to better
protect children from pesticide use was explained. Randy Perkins helped
me with the video editing for this massive project, and Ellen Winchell
helped provide names of individuals and organizations that would assist
the effort.
In 1997, I managed the Star Theater
for several months, showing movies and eating leftover popcorn. That
job ended when the tornado came through downtown Covington. At the same
time, I had a little sideline business, putting together websites for
local businesses who wanted to have some kind of presence on the new
world wide web. That business was called Net Flyer, and basically I just
converted their business pamphlet / flyer into a webpage, registering a
domain name for them and the like.
For
some reason, I was still interviewing people with my own video camera,
even though I didn't have an outlet for the finished product. I
interviewed Warren Salles of the Star Theater and Nancy Bowen-Ellzey
of Bowen and
Associates who talked about her firm's study of downtown Covington's
business potential. Many of the things she predicted in 1997 have come
to pass. I'm glad I did those interviews because now I have posted them to my St. Tammany blog.
I
worked at Lakeside Camera in Mandeville during December Christmas
season that year, and while that was interesting, it was a little
confusing with digital cameras coming into focus and 35mm cameras fading
into the background.
One of the fun things I did that year was take a bunch of pictures of the St. Patrick's Dayparade through downtown Covington.
That was also around the time I served on a committee to come up with a name for what we now call the Three Rivers Art Festival. A lot of possibilities were tossed around, but we came up with Three Rivers Art Fest and that seemed to stick. Twenty five years later, the annual event seems to have created quite a following, both in artist participants and festival goers.
I then worked at Poole Lumber Company
for two years, digitizing house plans into AutoCAD files and helping
them use a new software program to size engineered wood beams. When that
software came into general use with homebuilders and architects, my
position was phased out, and I went to work as Linda Roan's assistant at
the school board office.
Eventually
I became content manager for the School System's website. One of the
first things I did there was put together a webpage featuring a "photo archives"
of old school and classroom photographs taken over the years. The new
position also gave me the chance to go out to the schools on a regular
basis and take hundreds of pictures of events going on across the
parish. I did that for 14 years.
The Blog
Now I provide content for the TammanyFamily.com
blog, pulling old photographs and negatives from my personal files, and
taking new pictures of current events. Since Hurricane Katrina
destroyed almost 3,000 of my printed photographs, this is not as easy as it used to
be. Fortunately, I had 14,000 negatives and slides to go through, scan,
and try to remember what they were showing.
I thought it would be useful to compile a list of books I have written. Some of them are available in printed versions. Those are linked to the book ordering page.
Here they are:
Reveling: science fiction about the investigation into alternate realities
Cajun Gold: comedy about a Cajun who finds 200 lbs. of gold in the woods
Smatterings: a collection of short stories, poems, and essays. There's a section of science fiction stories, some Cajun humor in the section on Tibert's Swamp Stories, and a variety of off-the-wall observations.
The Pictorial Maps of Ron Barthet: A Collection of "bird's eye view" cartoon maps, with a special section featuring Posters of Imaginary Festivals and Conventions: Humorous posters advertising non-existent events.
Mind Pivot is the story of a college student researching the reasons why people faint, when he comes across an incredible discovery.
The Wedding Photographeris a novel that showcases a variety of wedding photographers over the years, some serious, some wacky, and some just amazed at the wedding and reception highjinks where they are asked to take pictures.
The Imaginary Bookstore is the story of a young woman who wants to do her job better, so she turns to her imagination for ideas. There she repeatedly visits an imaginary bookstore and asks a variety of people for advice. Only when real world events convince her to re-assess her life choices does she discover the answer she's been looking for.
A friend from the early days of the St. Tammany Historical Society, Don Sharp, asked for my help several years ago to get his area research out into the world. He had published a large book on the history of Mandeville, but he had a tremendous about of information on Madisonville, The Amite River and Gulf Coast lighthouses. So I put together a blog for him Sharp History, and we have continued meeting on a regular basis, now doing video interviews since he is 95 years old.
A newsletter from the Louisiana Society, American Institute of Building Design, April, 2001. Bob Sander, a house designer, asked me to help him computerize some of his more popular house plans
