MICHAEL KIRAL / L’Observateur / September 20, 2000

Lori Roussel of Reserve is wrapping up her year as the Louisiana’s Queen Sugar, a title she won a year ago at the Louisiana Sugar Cane Festival in New Iberia.

She went to the pageant as St. John the Baptist Parish’s Sugar Queen. Thisweekend she will relinquish her state crown at the 2000 Louisiana Sugar Cane Festival.

Roussel is a 1997 graduate of Riverside Academy and is currently a senior at Louisiana State University, majoring in math.

She recently sat down with L’Observateur to discuss her year as Queen Sugar.

L’Observateur: What’s the last year been like as the state sugar queen? Lori Roussel: It’s been a lot of fun. It’s been a big learning experience,traveling around Louisiana, learning about the other festivals. I didn’t realizethere is a festival for almost everything.

L’Ob: What was the highlight of the year? LR: I don’t think I could name one thing that sticks out in my mind. Therewere a lot of things. Meeting a lot of different people and all the differentqueens I traveled with week to week. That was a lot of fun, how you couldmake friends so quickly with people you just spend weekends with. You get soattached to everybody. Washington D.C. was really nice, getting to go to theCapitol.

L’Ob: When did you go to Washington? LR: February. It’s supposed to kick off the Mardi Gras season. It’s neat howyou actually bring Louisiana Mardi Gras to the Capitol. Everything is alldecorated, there is a parade and a huge ball. People pull around the floatsand you throw Mardi Gras beads. It’s a real neat experience.L’Ob: Was there anything you disliked about being queen? LR: Not really. The only thing was with school. Sometimes you were gone allweekend at a festival and you would get back late Sunday night and you had a test to study for or homework left to do. But it was worth it.L’Ob: What went through your mind when you found out you were going to be the state sugar queen? LR: I don’t remember really. Everything got really crazy. People startedjumping up. It all started pretty quickly. Pictures started being taken. I guessit really didn’t hit me until the next week when I got to travel. I got up on thestage and I had to tell people who I was and what I represented. That was kindof neat.

L’Ob: What does it take to become a Sugar Queen? LR: You have to participate in a parish pageant, or some pageants do it by strictly interview. You represent your parish at the state pageant. There’sabout 14 girls who compete. Basically, you just talk to the judges. You don’tneed to know everything about sugar. Just the basic ideas so that when yougo around and people ask you questions, you can tell them a little bit about sugar and about the festival you represent.

L’Ob: How many years you have been doing pageants? LR: I hadn’t done a pageant since two years ago. I don’t travel around doingpageants. I used to do them when I was younger. I just did this pageantbecause it was a local pageant and it was representing St. John Parish. I likedit and I’m from here. Last year, a lot of people encouraged me to do thepageant. I wasn’t even planning on doing it and they started talked me intodoing it. At the last minute, I was like, ‘OK, enter it.” L’Ob: What went through your mind winning the parish pageant? LR: That went by pretty fast, too. I had to walk down the stairs and I wasshaking. It was a good thing I had somebody’s hand to hold. It was nice. Theyhad to hold it the next morning because the electricity had gone out the night before. So I was even more nervous. I had to go to sleep that night knowingyou had gone through interviews that morning. I didn’t get much sleep, but itall worked out real good.

L’Ob: What were some of the things you had to do as Queen Sugar? LR: I just traveled to the different festivals representing the Sugar Cane Festival. Getting on stage and telling them a little about the festival, what Irepresent, when my festival was. We did several things – milking cows,picking strawberries, riding in horse carriages in the French Quarter. Weactually got to be a tourist attraction because people would see all these pageant queens. They would stop and ask us questions about who we were,and you could tell them about your festival and where you were from. Sopeople get to learn about your festival while you find out about other festivals.

L’Ob: Are you kind of sad that your reign is coming to an end? LR: It’s sad. I’m going to miss a lot of people I made friends with, and it’sbeen a lot of fun. I got to do a lot of things that I wouldn’t had been able todo otherwise. It’s going to be different having the weekends off and beingable to concentrate more on school. But, yes, I’m going to miss this. L’Ob: You have a younger sister (Hailey) doing this, don’t you? LR: She likes this kind of thing. And she helps me out a lot with everything.She knows more about this stuff than I do, actually, with the makeup and the hair. She’s always telling me ‘Put more makeup on. Do your hair like this.’She’s been doing my scrapbooks, and when I need something done, she’s always there.

L’Ob: What advice would give for her and for the next Queen Sugar? LR: Travel a lot because the year passes by real quickly. At first, you think,oh, a year, that’s a lot of time, But once it gets toward the end, you realize how fast it has passed by. Take a lot of pictures. And no matter how toughthings get, keep smiling because it’s all worth it. It’s really fun. L’Ob: Do you have plans to do more of these in the future? LR: Probably not. I’m starting to get older and school will probably start geta little harder, so I want to concentrate on my school work. Of course, Iwasn’t going to do it last year and this year has been a lot of fun. So, I notgoing to say no, but probably not.

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