Interviewer(s): T. McGuire. Port Sulphur, LA

Affiliation: University of Arizona

We had been introduced to Bert Turlich, a long-time Freeport Sulphur employee, by Kerry St. Pé of the Barataria-Terrebonne Estuary Program. Kerry, a native of Port Sulphur, had nominated Bert as our "ambassador" to Plaquemine Parish. The interview covered a number of areas, including descriptions of Freeport's company townsite at Port Sulphur, evacuation and shut-down procedures for the sulphur mines during storms, and the apprentice-craftsman system at Freeport. Pat, Bert's wife entered the discussion when it turned to school integration.

Bert Turlich was born in Empire in1937. His daddy was a fisherman who then got on with Freeport Sulphur in 1933 when they started up the Grand Ecaille mine. Bert graduated from Buras High and started with Freeport Sulphur in 1955. He then went into the service, came back and married his wife, Pat, who is from Gretna. They had three girls, all of whom have gone to college. Bert retired from Freeport in 1991. He had a number of jobs with the sulphur company, and remembers it as a "family," until the merger with McMoRan (which rapidly depressed the stock Bert had in the company).