When author and New Orleans native Michael Lewis (Liar’s Poker, The New New Thing) heard about the story of a highly scouted black high school football player from the wrong side of the tracks on the roster of a small private all white Evangelical church-school in Memphis, it piqued his interest. Little did he know the teen, Michael Oher, was the adopted son of Sean Touhy, one of Lewis’ classmates from his own high school, Isidore Newman School.
The connections run deep. Touhy, son of legendary basketball coach “Skeets” Touhy, had been an All-SEC player all four years of his college career at Ole Miss, leading the Rebels to their first and only SEC basketball championship in 1981. Lewis, meanwhile, was going on to a stellar career as an author, penning smart bestsellers that covered the gamut from the tottering financial world to Silicon Valley to sports. Newman is a small school; graduating classes in the 1970s encompassed about 70 students, and the pair had known each other intimately.
The ensuing book, The Blind Side, is about football, specifically the evolution of the role of the left tackle in protecting the quarterback, and the story of a well-to-do white Southern family who reached out to a black kid from the ghetto.
Enter another New Orleans connection, actress Sandra Bullock, who, after Hurricane Katrina, adopted Warren Easton Charter School, raising funds to rebuild the campus and programs and get the students back on their feet. The movie rights to the book were bought by Warner Bros., and when director John Lee Hancock was looking for an actress, Bullock was a natural for the part of Leigh Anne Touhy, former Ole Miss cheerleader, Memphis socialite and the wife of Sean Touhy. Leigh Anne was the driving force in the family, fiercely protecting and encouraging Oher to excel in academics as well as football.
Oher, scouted as one of the best offensive tackles in the nation, was recruited by college football teams all over the country, including LSU. He wound up, of course, at Ole Miss. An SEC and All American first team lineman, he was drafted in the first round by the Baltimore Ravens for the 2009 season. The Blind Side premiered fittingly enough, at the small, uptown Prytania Theatre in New Orleans last night. Bullock, Lewis, the Touhys, Saints quarterback Drew Brees and tight end Jeremy Shockey walked the red carpet. The movie opens nationwide today, with screenings in Lafayette starting at noon.
In rendering his ruling, District Judge John Trahan all but called the real estate developer a liar for inconsistencies in his accounts of what prompted him to punch a school teacher unconscious.
Frank’s Casing Crew, now doing business as Frank’s International, will make its final appearance on ABiz’s list of the Top 50 Privately Held Companies in Acadiana this year, and once again, it will likely be at the top with more than $1 billion in annual revenues. The 75-year-old company specializing in tubular fabrication and installation services to the oil and gas industry plans to go public this year.
The defeat, or rather highjacking of House Bill 420 in the final days of this year's Legislative Session, say Reps. Vincent Pierre and Terry Landry, is the result of the propaganda spread by one unidentified local media outlet and an unnamed former state Representative, but nothing to do with the original legislation's lack of checks, balances or details.
City-Parish Council Chairman Brandon Shelvin heaped steady doses of condescending ire on a Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Louisiana executive while failing to reveal his financial ties to a BC/BS rival.
Abbeville native David Primeaux was a popular professor until his death late last year, and while he was successful at camouflaging a dark past, he couldn’t outlive it.
Tehmi Chassion’s failure to recuse himself in the school board’s selection of a group health benefits provider raises ‘serious questions’ on whether he violated state ethics law.
He’s a singer. A songwriter. A piano man. A family man. He’s even got his own Wikipedia entry. He’s David Egan. And he knows ancient secrets about the monolithic stones of Stonehenge that he’s not willing to share.
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