George Prince Ferry Memorial - Destrehan, Louisiana - Disaster Memorials on Waymarking.com

Memorial to '76 ferry disaster unveiled in St. Charles
By Matt Scallan, The Times-Picayune
October 17, 2009, 3:06PM

A bell rang as each name was called, and a white balloon rose in memory of the deceased.

In the end, 77 balloons were drifting slowly over the Mississippi River, over the spot between Destrehan and Luling where 33 years ago the ferry M/V George Prince collided with the massive Norwegian tanker S.S. Frosta.

More than 300 people attended Saturday's dedication of a memorial to the victims and survivors of the Oct. 20, 1976, disaster.

"We pay tribute to the men and women who lost their lives trying to provide for their families," St. Charles Parish President V.J. St. Pierre Jr. said. "And there's no one here who would disagree that this monument has been a long, long, time in coming."

On that fateful morning, the George Prince was jammed with construction workers headed for jobs at industrial expansion projects on the west bank. Only 18 of the 95 people aboard escaped the 6:15 a.m. collision alive.

Brian Broussard of Gonzales and his cousin David were among the survivors.

"David was driving, so I was sound asleep," Brian Broussard said. Jolted suddenly awake, "I thought it was because the truck in front of us was backing up. Then I looked up and saw the bow of the Frosta. I could read every letter on that boat, it was so close."

Broussard said he and his cousin jumped out of David's Chevy Nova and ran to the bow of the George Prince moments before impact.

"I jumped up on the hood of a car just as it started to go under. There was water washing over my ankles," he said.

Brian Broussard was thrown into the river in 40-degree weather in darkness.

"I was trying to stay afloat and get my work boots off so they wouldn't pull me down," he said. "I could hear people screaming."

Both men managed to scramble onto the hull of the overturned ferry, from which they were rescued.

As Brian Broussard was handed his blue balloon, the symbol of those who survived, Annie Hills Miller of Baton Rouge, holding a white one, approached him and asked to hear his story.

Her father, Henry Hills Jr., and brother, Larry Hills, perished in the accident.

"I'm so sorry things turned out differently for your family," Broussard said.

"They were in a carpool and would come over to work on construction jobs," Miller said after taking pictures of her family members' names on the monument's black granite slab. "We always wonder how my brother would have turned out and what my father would have looked like in his old age."

The Destrehan monument, built with donated materials and labor, is not the first to commemorate the disaster. An obelisk in Edgard, in St. John the Baptist Parish, was dedicated in the early 1980s.

Disputes among St. Charles Parish officials about where to place the monument led to its construction in St. John, where many of the victims lived, according to news reports at the time.

Tommy Pritchett, who lost his brother, Kevin, in the accident -- and who missed the doomed ferry himself only because he overslept -- was among the relatives who worked to put the St. Charles monument in place. Pritchett also lost his best friend, Richard Songy, in the crash.

"It needs to be here," he said. "We're just about the last generation that will remember this firsthand. It needs to be remembered."

Disaster Date: 10/20/1976 Date of dedication: 10/17/2009 Memorial Sponsors: St. Charles Parish Disaster Type: Technological Relevant Website: [Web Link] Parking Coordinates: Not Listed

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