Interviewer: Diane Austin

Affiliation: University of Arizona

Steve Shirley has been a supporter of the research on the impacts of the offshore petroleum industry on communities along the Gulf of Mexico since 1998 when researchers from the Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology at the University of Arizona began conducting fieldwork in Morgan City. In addition to helping us understand Morgan City and east St. Mary Parish, Steve and his wife Jean, welcomed several generations of BARA researchers into their home. Throughout the years, though we had talked informally on many occasions, we had never pinned Steve down to an interview. In the course of gathering oral histories for the study of the deepwater era, though, I was finally able to get him to agree to a recorded interview. The interview was conducted at his home; Laura Ek from BARA was present as well.

Steve Shirley was born in … He moved with his family to Morgan City in 1973 and got a job at his father’s newspaper business, the Daily Review. In his interview, Steve describes life in Morgan City during the 1970s, the boom years, and then the 1980s, when the area went into what he refers to as a depression. His father worked to keep the paper in circulation during those difficult years . Steve and his brother became owners of the Daily Review in December 2001 when their father passed away; he became the editor and publisher at that time. He and his brother sold the paper in December 2010, shortly after this interview.