Interviewer(s): A. Gardner. Morgan City, LA

Affiliation: University of Arizona

Jerry Cunningham was an active participant in our previous project in the region. He put me in contact with a variety of different people in the Morgan City area, but I also thought it would be a good idea for me to interview him at some point in time. His actual participation in the offshore oil industry was somewhat limited, but his father worked in the industry, and he is also familiar with some of the community impacts felt by Morgan City over the years. The topic of conversation here wanders a bit, and there is a period where his son participates in the interview. Jerry talks quite a bit about the early seismograph crews on which both he and his father worked. He clarifies the activities of the various personnel on the boats, and explains some of the other technology used to locate oil. He talks about the danger in the oilpatch, the bad weather, and some of the accidents he witnessed. There are some good sections near the end about the emergent environmental movement in the region.

Jerry's father was born in Oklahoma and started working there for Shell on seismograph crews. He then moved down to southern Louisiana and worked his way up to the main office in New Orleans. Jerry was raised in southern Louisiana. He pulled cable on gravity boats and started working offshore in 1955 while going to school parttime. He completed his education after serving in the armed forces and became a teacher and principal in Morgan City.