When Cat Doucet met Charles DeGaulle

French President Emmanuel Macron was offered several choices of places to visit after his duties in Washington were done. Chicago, Atlanta, and other cities were on the short list, but they had no chance to push aside New Orleans with its centuries-old ties to France.
His visit December 2 wasn’t the first time a French president came to Louisiana. Valery Giscard d’Estaing visited New Orleans and Lafayette in 1970, and Charles DeGaulle was hosted by Louisiana luminaries at the end of April 1960.
One of the most unlikely of those 1960 hosts was D. J. (Cat) Doucet, the legendary sheriff of St. Landry Parish. New Orleans Mayor deLesseps (Chep) Morrison said Cat was invited because DeGaulle wanted to meet some French-speakers from south Louisiana, and that he knew “no more fabulous French character” than Doucet.
The sheriff was one of six men invited from south Louisiana. The others were Morgan Goudeau from Opelousas, E. A. Veillon and Gladney Manuel from Eunice, and Paul Tate and Calvin Landreneau from Mamou.
Those five drove to New Orleans for a big reception the day after DeGaulle’s arrival. Cat went a day early, worked his way into the group that met the president’s plane, and, he said afterwards, was one of the first to shake hands with DeGaulle at the airport.
Cat reported, “I said ‘bonjour, M’sieu le Presidente!’ We shook hands and he said to me, ‘je suis fier d’attend la langue français.’ That means he was proud to hear me talk French to him.”
Cat was in the motorcade that escorted DeGaulle to the Roosevelt Hotel, and according to one report “spoke at length to the guest of honor,” and his wife at the hotel.
“I told him that Chep Morrison could talk French, too, not as good as me, but pretty good,” Cat said. He said DeGaulle’s wife looked just like an acquaintance from Lawtell.
The sheriff was on hand the next day when DeGaulle spoke to a crowd in front of St. Louis Cathedral, then went inside for a ceremony during which “the priest threw holy water at him and all that.”
A long-running feud between Morrison and Gov. Earl Long created a bit of a scene at the banquet that followed.
DeGaulle’s visit came just after Long’s forced stays in several mental hospitals, and Morrison, who did not like Long to begin with, was afraid he might make a scene. He excluded the governor from all of the other events surrounding the visit, seated him far down the table at the banquet, and told Earl, who tended to ramble on, to keep his remarks to five minutes.
The hot-tempered Long spoke for only three minutes, told Morrison he could have the other two minutes back, and stormed out of the room.
Cat was a fervent Long supporter, but that’s not what the sheriff remembered most about that banquet.
“They had something in a big bowl, like whiskey. They set fire to it and walked through the room with it burning,” Cat said. “That’s the first time I’d seen that.”
Overall, the sheriff said, DeGaulle impressed him as “a very independent old gentleman, very sincere when we talked. He stood up straight, very dignified.”
He told friends that he enjoyed talking to the president, and that they had no problem understanding each other.
“You know,” he is said to have told a friend, “his French ain’t too bad.”
You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.