Extracted from The Advocate (Baton Rouge, LA)
Deidre Cruse
A memorial service celebrating the life of Deidre Cruse will be held Friday, March 10, at 11 a.m. at the First United Methodist Church, 23645 Church St., Plaquemine. Pastor Kemper Smith will conduct the service. Cruse, 65, died Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2012, at her home in Plaquemine.
Born on Dec. 5, 1946, in Winnsboro, she was the daughter of Jaime Taylor Cruse and the late James Monroe Cruse. Her maternal grandparents were the late Roy M. Taylor Sr. and Florence Young Taylor; paternal grandparents were the late Thomas M. Cruse and Edna Erskin Cruse.
She is survived by her mother; brother, James Christopher Cruse and wife Mollie Perritt Cruse; niece, Marguerite Taylor Cruse; nephew, William Case Cruse, all of Winnsboro; uncles, Roy M. Taylor Jr. and wife Irene, Ruston and Larry A. Cruse Taylor and wife Barbara, Newman, Ga.; aunt, Marian T. Phillips and husband Ray, Pioneer; and many cousins.
She was preceded in death by a nephew, Christopher Crossgrove Cruse; and her father.
A 1964 graduate of Winnsboro High School, she earned a bachelor of arts degree in journalism in 1968, at Northeast Louisiana College (now the University of Louisiana), Monroe. Her life was dedicated to her work in journalism, the only career she ever considered. Government and politics became her focus. At 13 she was columnist on the teen affairs in The Franklin Sun in Winnsboro. She began her professional career at the Monroe Morning World, later moving to the Arkansas Gazette in Little Rock, Ark., and the Baton Rouge Morning Advocate. Her work at the Advocate included assignment to its Capitol Bureau during the era of Governor Edwin Edwards, and earned her a place in both Clyde Vidrine's Just Taking Orders, and Leo Honeycutt's Edwin Edwards: Governor of Louisiana. She was press secretary for Louisiana House Speaker Bubba Henry in his unsuccessful run for the governorship.
For the past 25 years she has been governmental reporter for the Plaquemine POST/SOUTH, where she achieved an unprecedented five Louisiana Press Association Gibbs Adams Awards for Investigative Reporting, the latest in 2010 when the POST/SOUTH won LPA's Division 7 Newspaper of the Year Award. Through the years she has consistently earned state as well as national awards. At the POST/SOUTH she found a new direction, a new home and a second family with POST/SOUTH owners Gary and Joyce Hebert. The generous, friendly, fun-loving people of South Louisiana became her people. Possessed of a finely tuned perceptive sense, she met the challenge of covering the intricacies of Iberville Parish and Louisiana politics with gusto, fairness and exactitude. She knew how to keep a confidence. She earned the respect of many and no one will be able to take her place.
Dee was a very private person with a fiercely independent spirit. She was an astute observer of the world around her. She was a student of life, approaching its mysteries and its suppositions with an open mind and a willingness to think and act alternatively. She was a reader and a bibliophile with an eclectic collection that reflected her diverse interests. She was a collector of minerals. She had a generous and loving heart. Her enjoyment of fun and festivity was reflected in her year-long search for Christmas gifts, the elaborate Christmas decorations she fashioned for farflung family and friends, and the elegant gift wrapping for which she was noted. She was secretary for the Friends of the Iberville Parish Library, and a volunteer at the Iberville Parish Museum.
Tuesday, March 7, 2012