‘There’s a lightness’: Celebrations return to hurricane-battered Lake Charles

LAKE CHARLES — When musician Dominique Darbonne stepped on stage at the recent Chuck Fest music festival, she felt overwhelmed. In a good way, that is.

The festival returned to the streets of downtown Lake Charles on Oct. 22 for the first time after being on hiatus for two years as a result of the coronavirus pandemic and the city's ongoing struggle to recover from a series of natural disasters.

"Everybody I've ever known and loved was there and it's just really like one of my wildest dreams — I was imagining that, longing for that and wondering if we would ever be able to be together like that again," said Darbonne, lead singer for popular local band The Flamethrowers. "It just reminded me how much I love Lake Charles, how awesome Lake Charles is and how much this place is worth fighting for."

Chuck Fest marks the return of events on a larger scale after two tumultuous years for the city. With restrictions on public gatherings to curb the spread of the coronavirus and many venues damaged or destroyed by hurricanes Laura and Delta in 2020, most gatherings had been out of necessity: to share food, help repair damages or get people vaccinated.

"It seems the last couple of years when we're getting together it's not for something good, right? We're grieving or we're fighting something or we're recovering," said Darbonne, who also helped storm survivors through the Vessel Project charity she co-founded. "I think that for a lot of people, this was a reminder that we have a culture other than suffering and frustration."

The success of this year's Chuck Fest — many locals refer to the city as Lake Chuck — showed the need for this kind of positive event for the community, said Amie Johnson, board member of the Arts and Humanities Council of Southwest Louisiana, which organized the event.

"There was this nostalgia for that kind of an event, everybody coming together, dancing out in the street with your friends," Johnson said. "There's a lightness."

Coming together as a community for a positive reason is a key element of the region's recovery process as well as its preparedness for future disasters, said Matt Young, director of cultural affairs for the city of Lake Charles. Other events have also gradually returned, but Chuck Fest, which began in 2014, had become a major event for the city.

"After the storms, when it looked like there wasn't going to be an equitable federal response, they just pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and helped their neighbors. I don't know that that would exist if it wasn't for a sense of community, a sense of belonging," Young said. "And that's ushered in by large community events like this."

For organizations serving the community, the return of events also means a return of fundraising opportunities.

The Children's Museum of Southwest Louisiana saw its physical location completely destroyed by Laura. Still, Allyson Montgomery, director of operations and development, said the museum held off on its annual fundraisers in 2021, recognizing that there were more pressing needs in the community at the time.

"We wanted to make sure that your basic needs in the community, such as food and housing, were addressed [first]," Montgomery said. Now, the museum is able to hold its first large-scale event for donors, while waiting for a new facility to be built on the northern shore of the lakefront.

Without a physical facility, much of the museum's programming has centered around events as well, including an upcoming arts festival.

"All of our concentration is just participating in community events and outreach opportunities," Montgomery said. "You can't stop living life just because something bad happened. So you pick up the pieces and you move forward and you make it bigger and better than it was before."

Events are also an important factor in the region's economic recovery. While most tourists come to gamble at one of two — soon to again be three — casinos, a robust cultural scene is likely to motivate them to stay longer — and maybe spend some of their winnings at other local businesses.

"When we don't have those festivals and events, we're lacking that celebration of our heritage and our culture and our cuisine that visitors really want to experience when they're here," said Kathryn Shea Duncan, director of social media for Visit Lake Charles, the city's conventions and visitors bureau.

"It gives the visitor something to add on to their itinerary, so it lengthens their stay," she added. "They're going to buy more gas, they're going to patronize more restaurants and more bars, and more local businesses, which increases the visitor impact in the community."

Some of the most immediate effects might be seen in downtown Lake Charles, a popular location for events and festivals. The district has struggled to regain its vibrancy, but is currently experiencing a wave of investment by both private and public entities looking to rebuild and transform buildings and businesses.

"It's all about quality of life, not only for downtown, but quality of life for all of southwest Louisiana," said Jay Ecker, owner of Panorama Music Hall and board member of the Lake Charles Downtown Business Association. "Really, we're talking about the living room of our community."

Darbonne, the musician, is hopeful that there will be many more events in the near future that will allow residents of Lake Charles and beyond to come together for the good times, helping them last through the bad.

"Life in Louisiana and especially in this No Man's Land area, it's not really easy, we face a lot of interesting challenges," she said, referring to the early 19th-century designation of the region. "My hope is that as we continue to recover and as we move forward, that we're all getting together a lot more often and that we're enjoying each other and lifting each other up. Because that's how we're going to get through everything."

Playing in front of hundreds of people in the city's living room seemed like a good start.