The Gateway to South Louisiana
Reggie Thomas, a thirty-year veteran of the Lafayette City Police Department who recently retired, shares his journey of growing up in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans, joining the police force in 1990, and how an effective police department works to build trust in the entire community in this edition of Discover Lafayette with Jan […]
Ben Berthelot has served as Executive Director of the Lafayette Convention & Visitors Commission since 2012 and in that role, is an enthusiastic and effective spokesperson for the restaurants, hotels, and related industry tourism professionals that support our region’s unique cultural attributes. In this episode of Discover Lafayette, Ben visits with Jan Swift about the […]
Lafayette General Hospital evolved from the Lafayette Sanitarium, the first hospital in Lafayette. The Sanitarium was founded in 1911 by Doctors L.O. Clark, J. Franklin Mouton, and L.A. Prejean. It was located on St. John Street and had five or six beds, eventually expanding to 84 beds. By the 1950s the facilities were inadequate and […]
Meet Gerald Gerami, owner of Rug Gallery by Gerami’s, who has followed in the entrepreneurial footsteps of his late grandfather, Joseph Patrick Gerami, who opened his first retail establishment in Lafayette in 1920. Gerald Gerami sat down with Jan Swift, host of Discover Lafayette, to share his experience as a successful vendor who has survived […]
Architect A. Hayes Town designed the first municipal auditorium in Lafayette in 1957, under the direction of Mayor Jerome Domengeaux and Herbert Heymann. Their vision was to serve the eight-parish area of South Louisiana we now call Acadiana. Construction on the auditorium was completed in 1960 at 1373 S. College Road. 60 years later, we […]