Smiley Anders for July 30, 2008

• By SMILEY ANDERS
• Advocate columnist
• Published: Jul 30, 2008 - Page: 1B - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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No matter how many years you’ve known some people, when you hear their names you always think of them at a certain time in their lives — the high school football star, the girl you took to the Fats Domino concert, the guy who told bad jokes at the Cotton Club bar.

When I returned from my vacation to learn of the death of my friend Bill Meyerer, I had this image of him:

We’re having lunch at the City Club, knocking back our second Bloody Mary as we await the culinary magic of Charles Brandt.

Bill’s the assistant manager of the Baton Rouge Chamber of Commerce, and I’m the 25-year-old oil and gas editor of The Shreveport Times.

The Times is a good paper, but I’ve found that the “Ark-La-Tex” is too much “Ark” and “Tex” and not enough “La.” I’m desperately homesick for Baton Rouge. 

Bill is interviewing me for a public relations post at the chamber, and when he tells me he’s going to recommend me for the job to Executive Director Vic Ehr, I accept on the spot — forgetting to ask about the salary.

Not long before his death, Bill and I had lunch again — a more modest event at Pasta Garden. (No Bloody Marys this time.)

I told him that despite our long association, and his impressive career in public relations and organization management, when I thought of him it was always first as “The Guy Who Got Me Out of Shreveport.”

The littlest director
Mary Beth Roussel says, “My 3-year-old grandson Hudson, playing tee ball, periodically checks to make sure we are watching and cheering him on. 

“One evening, just as the game was beginning, he looked over at us and we all immediately started clapping.

“He yelled to us, ‘Not   yet!’ ”

Colorful comment
“Tiger Phan” wishes LSU would outfit its athletes in royal purple and old gold, rather than the yellow on today’s uniforms:

“In the 1930s, ’40s and early ’50s, the Tiger football team wore metallic gold helmets. The helmets became more of an ‘old gold’ during the Paul Dietzel era, taking on the familiar purple stripes with the white stripe in the middle — basically the same design as today’s ‘canary yellow’ helmets.”