By LEONARD GRAY / L’Observateur / May 12, 1999

LAPLACE – Anna Battard, 71, of Reserve, was one of the lucky ones.

She survived the Mother’s Day casino bus crash in New Orleans which killed 22 of her friends on Interstate 610.

“I’m not lucky in other ways, but I consider myself lucky,” she said in a bedside press conference Tuesday afternoon in River Parishes Hospital, under the watchful eye of hospital administrator Ann Kuss and Battard’s daughter, Cathy Caronna.

She sustained a broken right arm and severe bruises on her head and body.

“I’m hurting, otherwise I’m OK,” Battard said.

The trip was just one in a long line of similar casino trips she had made with a group of friends from St. John the Baptist Parish. She usuallybrought $80 with her to hit the slot machines with, not seriously gambling, but she once won $300 on one trip, she said.

This time she joined the bus at Delchamps Sunday morning and was greeted, as usual, by driver Frank Bedell, who had driven on earlier trips.

“We never had a problem with him,” she said. “He seemed to be a gooddriver. He was a pretty nice fellow.”Trip organizer Shirley Gauff led the group in a brief prayer, as usual, and the trip began.

The group was happy and chatting, awaiting both the dispensing of cupcakes and bingo cards, once four more passengers were picked up in New Orleans East.

At City Park, however, everything changed.

“It started swerving,” Battard remembered. “We didn’t know what wasgoing on. The ceiling started falling down and the electrical stuff startedsparking.”What was happening was the bus was crashing through the roadside barrier and striking a concrete embankment.

Battard was seated four rows back and ended up pinned between one friend against a seat, with two other people on top of her.

“One was on top of me and another on top of her,” she recalled.

“My friends were asking me for help, and I said I can’t help you. All of uswere calling ‘Help! Help!'” Battard remembers that a minister on his way to church stopped to help and kept talking to her as she and others were rescued from the bus wreckage.

“They were getting the ones more hurt than me off first,” she said. “Iwant to thank everybody that helped us get out of the bus.”Battard added she’s anxious to leave the hospital and said: “I’m not a person who enjoys sitting down. I like to keep moving.”She counted it as a miracle so many had survived the crash and said she felt good talking about the tragedy “because I’m talking about it and not holding it in.”She said she may return to the casinos once she heals – “but not on the bus.”

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