Gathering at the pond

• By SONYA KIMBRELL
• Ascension staff writer
• Published: May 15, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

• Print
• Email
• Save
• Share

• Del.icio.us
• Digg
• Facebook
• Reddit
• 

GONZALES — Luke Landaiche, 17, rowed his inflatable boat smoothly to the edge of the pond.

In a cast on his left leg from knee to toe, Landaiche used the boat as an accommodation to be part of the annual East Ascension High School senior pond jump.

As he hoisted himself on the bank of the pond in front of Promise Hospital, his mother, Roxanne Landaiche, snapped photographs of her son dripping wet with a white plastic bag wrapped around the cast.

“It maybe got a little bit wet,” he said, referring to his cast.

After their last test May 7, EAHS seniors donned costumes, flip-flops and floaties to participate in the annual rite of passage that features seniors trying make it across the pond either swimming, wading or floating.

Roxanne Landaiche and her husband, David, both graduated from EAHS in the late 1970s.

“They didn’t do it back then,” she said, “But they’ve done it for years. I didn’t try to stop him. I told him as long as he stayed on the boat,” she said.

As for Luke Landaiche, he said he never considered not participating.

“It’s tradition,” he said.

That tradition originated in 1968 when a few seniors jumped into the pond. 

The pond jump became more organized in the 1990s when Gonzales Chief of Police Bill Landry, who made the leap into the pond on his last day of school, teamed up with school officials to add safety measures. 

Senior Robert Glover gave the number one sign as he climbed out of the pond; he was the first student to make it from one side to the other.

But the event is not about speed so much as it is about tradition and community.