My love of the place started many years ago. My grandfather trained during WWII to be a HUMP pilot at Sheppard Field in Texas. As a Southern Illinois guy, on the weekends he went to New Orleans when he had some free time.
Many years later my father was working on his PhD in Civil War history. T. Harry Williams was a professor at LSU. He wanted to learn from the best so, off to LSU he went. He later taught there.
As I left college and thought of future schooling, LSU was kind of just a given. I had offers for grad school far and wide, but LSU, LSU, LSU was really the only option. It made my father proud.
I was born in the Summer of 1969, in Baton Rouge. My earliest memories are of Louisiana. After we moved away we went back every year. I could talk for hours about how much I love the place. How many bizarre conversations I had. The food. The people, oh the people.