Linda Hebert Todd

Author - Westlake, Louisiana

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Wally Hebert: The Early Years: An Unnamed Hurricane and the Last Days in Big Lake

November 13, 2016 By Linda H. Todd 3 Comments

Born Wallace Andrew Hebert in a Cameron Parish sharecropper’s house on August of 1907, there was some confusion about his birthday. His mother said he came into the world on August 21. The baptismal certificate indicates otherwise—August 22. We always went along with his mother because, after all, she was there. His parents were Matilde Smith Hebert and John Aurelian Hebert. Wallace was the second of eight children—five girls and three boys.

He started hunting and fishing by the time he was nine years of age. He dismantled wooden barrels and used the staves to bring down rabbits. Even at that young age he threw with a deadly left-handed accuracy.

The unnamed hurricane of 1918 destroyed their house and obliterated their farm when it struck Cameron Parish. The storm had blown away and killed everything they had. My father’s memory of that storm is the stuff of nightmares.

farmHe remembered a neighbor girl, about seven, a friend of one of his sisters. She had long, thick black hair hanging well past her waist. There was no place to take shelter when the storm hit and the father had to make his family leave the house. All they could do was lie down by the strongest section of fence and pray. When the little girl lost her grip on the fence, her hair caught on the barbed wire and kept her from blowing away. Sometimes her body would be parallel to the ground, but no one could do anything to help. No one died, but they all had broken bones and other injuries.

He remembered a horse impaled by a two-by-four, and a house no longer there. He and his family spent the duration of the storm cowering in a ditch, waiting for nature’s fury to abate. When it was over they packed up what was left and headed north to the city of Lake Charles in Calcasieu Parish. Thus began the next chapter of his incredible journey.

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Comments

  1. Micki Todd says

    November 14, 2016 at 1:22 pm

    love this story Mama…I never heard this one before!!

    Reply
  2. Cliff says

    November 14, 2016 at 7:44 pm

    Wow. I’ve not seen much about the 1918 storm.

    Reply
  3. Judith Hebert Cagle says

    November 15, 2016 at 8:59 pm

    In the year 1918 . . . Hurricanes had no names . . . like that one in the year 1900 in Galveston.
    Uncle “Foots” told me about this one in 1918 at Uncle “Preacher’s” 90th Birthday celebration. He loved his brother “Preacher.”
    Sherry knows about it from talking with the elders about their childhoods.

    Hurricanes have continued to have profound effects on our family members’ lives in the years since 1918.

    Reply

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Linda Hebert ToddLinda has completed her novel—Wild Justice, a crime story with a revenge theme, and has started another one set in Labrador and Louisiana. She writes all her stories in longhand, bringing to life the beautiful bayous of south Louisiana. Read more...

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Linda Hebert Todd, Author, Westlake, LA - Mystery Novel
Mystery Novel

Wild Justice

By Linda Hebert Todd

Keeley Chesson, a crime reporter for a city newspaper, is orphaned at age fourteen, courtesy of a sheriff's deputy who killed her parents and got away with it. Now, fourteen years later, the deaths of her parents still a mystery and the deputy now her town's police chief, tragedy again rocks her…

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Short Stories

Sidonie and the Loup-Garou and Other Stories from the Bayou

By Linda Hebert Todd

The short fiction in this book introduces the reader to an interesting assortment of characters. The lead story—Sidonie and the Loup-Garou—features a high school girl who learns it is a good idea to heed the warnings of her Cajun grandparents. The final tale—The Ghost and Sadie Stackpoole– solves…

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