*upbeat music plays* *music fades*
Wilda Richard: I'm Wilda Richard, and my connection
over here is that I came to work here in 1970, and my two daughters came to school here also.
At first, I worked in janitorial, in housekeeping and I worked there for 35 years and retired.
Stayed home two years, took care of my husband who was ill. And I came back to buy some cookbooks
for Christmas gifts and I met Sr. Lieux down the hall and she said, "You just the person I needed
to see." So I said, "Why?" So she said, "I have a job for you." And I'm thinking,
I'm not looking for a job. *laughs* So she said, "It's just two hours.
It's just to come and sit with the girls when they come from school." Because the people that
was working in the boarding school then, were the people that worked at the boy's school.
So I told her, I said, " I'll think about it," But before I left I told her, I said, "I'll take it."
And then I've been in the boarding school since 09, I think.
This was an apartment right here, was where Mr. Joe Castile and his wife, Ms. Lily Mae lived here.
Mr. Joe was a bus driver and Ms. Lily Mae worked in the cafeteria. And on the other side,
Sister Gios' mother lived there and the center was a laundry room. I think everybody, pretty much
everyone is gone except for a few people. Well, from when I first started here, everybody's gone.
My mother-in-law also worked here years ago, Cornelia Richard. She was born in 1909
and they washed here. So I'm almost sure that they probably washed in that same place. I can remember
when they remodeled the place. Even before that, when they sand blasted the main building,
that was a lot of work. Everything's changed because the nuns that were able to work
lived on the third floor. The old nuns were in the front, on the second floor. I mean,
all of that is classrooms now. And when I first came here,
they had parlors all over the place. They had sitting rooms, so when parents came.
And also in the administration building, a lot of the rooms in there were parlors.
In the boarding school, there were tubs instead of showers. And it was like a bath
and what, eight people had to share that because they had four girls to each room.
They only had curtains separating the girls. And even in the elementary building,
there were bath tubs on that side because they had dorms on that side also
because they had kids coming here from fifth grade on up.
And at one time, we had so many borders here, they were making dorms out of classrooms.
And one time we had over 100 boarders.
In the summertime when school would close, Sister Mouton always had a big retreat where
she had all these ladies that would come and they would stay in the boarding school.
And in the summertime, my kids work here too. When it was almost time for school to open
and we wasn't finished with the work, they would tell us we could get extra help. So my two girls
came and they would work, help us to clean. And also, my son came. The first time he came,
Sister Moreau had him scraping a door. So that afternoon he's like, "Ma, I'm not going back.
Sister Moreau got me scraping the doors. I don't know nothing about scraping doors."
But he would get up the next morning, he would come anyway. So the next day he said,
"Ma, she got me painting now. I don't know how to paint. I'm not going back." I wouldn't say
anything. I'd just say to myself, oh well. And he would get up and come again. Then
one day, Sister Moreau brought her nephew here and they were able to drive the old truck in the yard.
I never heard, “I'm not going back anymore”. *laughs*
When my girls were here, I used to tell her, “when my girls graduate, I'm out of here”.
Well, Sister Moreau left more than once. Each time she left, she came back. She saw me here
and I am still here today. While I was working with Sister Moreau, I guess she was overwhelmed
with her work. She had started me running errands for her. So I would run errands and
I was taking the girls to the doctor. And one day, I totaled the school car. *laughs*
After that, my husband told me, he'd say, "You not going to drive them
rich white people children anymore, before you kill of them!" *laughs*
So that was the end of my driving. *laughs* *upbeat music continues*