By Rita Shirley LeBleu

Forty-nine years ago Dinah Landry, Executive Director for the Cameron Council on Aging/Community Action Agency, responded to a “little bitty” part-time, help wanted ad in the Cameron Pilot. She was interviewed and got the job.

“I was supposed to start school to become a veterinarian. I had been telling everyone that’s what I was going to do since I was 12 years old,” said the owner of 30-something assorted pets. That’s minus the two orphaned baby possums her husband Cameron Parish Sheriff Deputy Toby Landry said she absolutely could not keep.

When the college semester began, Landry stayed at the part-time, minimum wage job where she saw too much paperwork and too few senior citizens.

The woman who cannot stand to be bored, doesn’t mind asking questions and is not afraid of work, got an inkling of an idea about how grants work, got busy, and helped start the Cameron Parish Council on Aging Nutrition Program in Cameron Parish.

The little part-time job was a stepping stone to making a difference in the community for seniors.

“Coming to eat a meal was something we needed but some of the seniors couldn’t get here,” she said.

Landry went to work. The DOTD had a program that would, if the CCOA’s application was accepted, provide a van and the cost to maintain it. However, it wouldn’t be a sure thing going forward. Landry would have to reapply each year.

“The people were so excited, but I didn’t have a driver, and would go pick them up and bring them out. They enjoyed the recreation. They enjoyed being there, and so we just kept moving on up every year.”

Not one to rest on her laurels, she put her skills to work to get funding from the Governor’s Office of Elderly Affairs to pay employees to clean the floors and do other basic, necessary homemaking skills that seniors could no longer perform.

However, Landry hit a roadblock when she sought assistance to help seniors pay for utilities. Only a Community Action Agency could get that kind of help.

“So, how do I do that,” she asked.

She went to the CSBG office, “I’m here to apply for and receive the grant,” she told the director.

There was another applicant there from a different parish. He said he was there to apply for a grant, but he said he didn’t know if he would get it or not. The director looked at Landry.

“You think you’re gonna get it,” he asked.“I am. It will probably be the smallest grant you got, but I’m gonna get it and I’m gonna take it home today,” she said.

And she did.

Community Action Agency in Cameron

The Community Action Agency was born in 1986, a sister to the Council on Aging. It allows the sharing of administrative costs, rather than the doubling of those costs. It helps meet the needs of low income individuals and families, not just seniors. However, many seniors meet the low income criteria.

The next goal Landry tackled was securing funding for Head Start education of grandchildren and great-grandchildren being raised by grandparents and great-grandparents.

She was told that she would have to go to Dallas, so she did, only to be told that the population of Cameron Parish was too small for a Head Start program. Five years later, Head Start programs opened in Cameron and Hackberry. Now the programs are located in Hackberry and Grand Lake.

When hurricanes destroyed housing that Landry helped secure, those were built back in Grand Lake where property insurance premiums are better than in lower Cameron Parish.

She has helped secure funding to keep families from becoming homeless, and is currently worried about senior citizens who will not be able to manage their rent after a mobile home park increased its space rent significantly.

“One of the seven people in that park is a veteran with one leg,” Landry said. “These people only have enough to eat.”

Her husband, and #1 volunteer tells her she’s been living in the nonprofit world too long.

“He never knows what I’m going to do next,” she said.

Don’t think of Landry as a saint. She admits her task – working with government and politicians – can be trying and she can be short-tempered.

“Frustration comes when something is done that might be politically correct but not correct for seniors,” she said.

When asked what she wished that 17-year-old would have known 49 years ago, she talked about the lack of integrity among some politicians. She has honed certain skills for maneuvering. She can be blunt. She can persistently pester. She can play the sweet little lady who doesn’t know better and needs help. And she has played by their rules, yet done it her way. When one official told her he couldn’t accommodate everyone that asked for help and to seek what she needed through her legislators, she ceased asking for help. Instead, she rounded up 12 seniors who traveled to Baton Rouge to ask for help.

“Those 12 seniors got the bill passed that I couldn’t,” she said.

The most disappointing aspect of her job has been dealing with families of the elderly.

“How can they not help,” she asked. “When they’re that age, they’ll know.”

Hopefully that time will come sooner rather than later, but until then, they have Dinah Landry and the team that she’s put together that is as compassionate about what they do as she is.