Former Lt. Gov. Paul Hardy, his friend of many years, got it right when he described Pat Huval as “a real living legend, a self-educated entrepreneur, [and] a premier restaurateur.”
The man who put the St. Martin Parish community of Henderson on the map died Jan. 6. He was 88 years old, and they were full and rewarding years.
Pat and Agnes Hebert Huval opened a little store in 1948, selling mostly groceries and household necessities, which in Henderson included live crawfish sold by the sack and homemade hamburgers. When more and more people began to visit the store for the burgers, the Huvals added seafood dishes to the menu. They were just trying to earn a living; they had no idea that their modest little store would become a Cajun restaurant known around the world, even before Cajun was cool and crawfish were hot.
Business was good enough that they were soon able to buy a restaurant and dance hall with a story of its own. It was opened at Lenora Station (a train stop about where the Swamp Expressway begins today) after the Flood of 1929 forced its proprietor Henry Guidry out of the Atchafalaya community in the middle of the Basin. By the mid-1930s, flood damage caused Southern Pacific to abandon the line that ran through the Basin (and also the Lenora Station), so Guidry hitched a mule team to his building and pulled his store a few miles south to the community of Henderson that was springing up just inside the new flood protection levee. Murals of the long-gone Atchafalaya community on the walls of the current restaurant reflect Pat’s appreciation of a heritage he loved.
Pat was born in Henderson in 1929, at the height of the Depression. His father died when he was less than a year old and he dropped out of school in the fourth grade to help his struggling mother support his siblings. He was working as a grocery store clerk when he married Agnes at the age of 18.
Their first restaurant was a bit of a gamble. There was no Interstate running next to Henderson in those days. The restaurant was at the very end of a winding, two-lane road that wasn’t that easy to find. (Directions back then: “Go to Breaux Bridge, turn onto the road that runs past La Poussiere dance hall. Keep driving. There will be a road to the right just when you think you’re good and lost. Follow it until it stops.”)
But good cooking and a growing appreciation of crawfish brought people from miles around to the isolated Henderson levee, and Pat’s personality made them keep coming back.
Politics and story-telling came naturally to him. “He loved politics,” Hardy reminisced. He also loved political stories and could entertain for hours telling them. Sometimes, he acted a bit like “a little ole country boy” to hide a shrewd appreciation of a political situation. Old pols learned to be a bit wary when he began to put on like that.
Pat began pushing for the incorporation of the Henderson community in the early 1970s. The people liked the way he did that so much that they picked him as the first mayor and kept picking him for more than 20 years. In that capacity, he built roads and buildings and oversaw services for the community, even serving as a volunteer fireman. Townspeople will remember him for that, but they will remember him more for his big heart and his concern for friends and neighbors.
“He was loved by his people and loved by a multitude of friends,” Hardy said. “He left a legacy of pride and distinction to his fellow Cajuns.”
He also left a testament to what men and women from the humblest means can accomplish if they are willing to work hard at bettering themselves, at caring for their families and friends, and at living a fulfilling life.
Mr. Pat never let his lack of formal education slow him down. His business success, tenure as mayor, selection to a bank board, and appointment to state boards and commissions attest to that. In fact, it became a point of pride as he looked back on his life in later years.
“You educated boys study history,” he’d say. “Me, I made history.”
That he did. And quite a history it was.
A collection of Jim Bradshaw’s columns, Cajuns and Other Characters, is now available from Pelican Publishing. You can contact him at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.
