Ferriday over in Concordia Parish has gotten a lot of attention over the years for producing so many nationally known celebrities for such a small town.
There are only about 3,500 people there now, and the population has never climbed above 5,000. But Ferriday has, indeed, been the home of a disproportionate number of famous folks.
Among them are cousins Jimmy Swaggart, Jerry Lee Lewis and Mickey Gilley. All of them were born in Ferriday just a year or so apart and grew up there into the 1950s.
Swaggart became one of the biggest television evangelists in the world. Lewis was a rock n’ roll singing and piano playing sensation, and Gilley made his mark as a country music singer and songwriter.
Howard K. Smith was born in Ferriday a couple of decades before the celebrated cousins. He was a long-time news anchor and analyst at CBS and ABC.
Military pilot Gen. Claire Chenault, who led the famous “Flying Tigers” in World War II, was born in East Texas but later lived on Lake St. John in Ferriday.
Stories of notable people with Ferriday roots were compiled for a book in 1991 called simply “Ferriday, Louisiana.” Author Elaine Dundy came from Hollywood to do research for the publication.
Browsing through the book again reminded me just how popular Swaggart was in his heyday.
Before he was shaken by a sex scandal, Swaggart was on 2,000 syndicated radio and television stations in 145 countries. His ministry was making $150 million a year.
He even impressed syndicated columnist Lewis Grizzard, who said, “God may talk to Oral Roberts and move hurricanes around Pat Robertson, but I’ll bet he tapes Jimmy Swaggart.”
With all due respect to Ferriday, my hometown of Springhill has also produced a long line of prominent personalities.
John David Crow was a Herculean football player who lived down the street from me. When he showed up for back yard football games, the rest of us found excuses to leave.
Bear Bryant recruited him to play at Texas A&M, and Crow was the first player from Louisiana to win the Heisman Trophy. That was in 1957. Others from the state who won the Heisman later were LSU stars Billy Cannon in 1959 and Joe Burrow in 2019.
Springhill had some other big-time athletes. Running back John Stephens was a first round pick in the NFL draft in 1988. He had played at Northwestern and is the father of international tennis star Sloane Stephens.
Devin White was an All-America linebacker at LSU after his high school career in Springhill. The fifth pick in the 2019 NFL draft, he helped lead Tampa Bay to its 2021 Super Bowl win.
Joe Stampley started singing with bands in his high school days at Springhill. He gained national attention as the lead singer with The Uniques when the group had the hit song All These Things.
Stampley, who has performed in Natchitoches a few times in recent years, has had numerous records on country music charts on his own and in duets with Moe Bandy.
Mike Haynes left Springhill in the 1950s and first gained fame promoting skinny cigarettes on billboards and in TV and magazine commercials as the Winchester Man.
That led to a couple of hundred appearances in movies and television shows as an actor and stunt man.
Sisters Janice and Sherry Boucher, whose daddy Jesse Boucher was mayor of Springhill when they were growing up, had long careers as actresses.
Sherry was married to actor George Peppard and was in films from 1968 through 2006.
Janice, known as Savannah Smith, appeared for more than four decades in numerous films including North Dallas Forty and Everybody’s All-American.
Natchitoches has also been home to a lot of folks who soared to success in various fields, but more on that later.
REPRINTED FROM THE NATCHITOCHES TIMES