Interviewer(s): A. Gardner. New Iberia, LA

Affiliation: University of Arizona

This was a great and enjoyable interview. Harold Dugas was referred to my by Jimmy Hernandez. I met Harold at his house in New Iberia. We got along really well, and we ended up driving out to see his land camp after the interview. He's got a couple photographs from Cameroon in his scrapbook. We covered the typical topics, and he was able to deal with all the questions quite well. There are particularly vivid descriptions of growing up on the farm and keeping up with homework during the harvest, first day on the rig, great injury story, good description of moving offshore, cleaning the valves into the marsh, problems with new technology, the machine that ties the knots.

Harold grew up in a farming family in Cajun country during the Depression. He served in WWII and returned to the states to attend college under the GI Bill. Harold worked for Shell most of his life, and thanks to his education, he was able to advance up the job ladder. Like many of his peers, he began at the bottom of this ladder, but with his education, he advanced rapidly through the ranks. The latter part of his career consisted of engineering and construction jobs abroad for Shell.