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Contact: David West (west@nsula.edu
)
News Bureau
Northwestern State University
Natchitoches, LA 71497
(318) 357-6466
11/21/2002
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NATCHITOCHES-Jerry Pierce, Vice-President for External Affairs at Northwestern State University and a columnist for Louisiana newspapers and magazines for the past 35 years, is the author of a new book entitled "Prayer Meetings & Pink Corduroys."
The book is a collection of some new, unpublished columns and others that have appeared in The Natchitoches Times, Springhill Press, Mansfield Enterprise and other newspapers and in the statewide magazine Louisiana Country.
Pierce's book was published by the Association of Louisiana Electric Cooperatives, which publishes Louisiana Country. His columns have been published in every issue since 1994 of the magazine, which has a circulation of 130,000.
The 150-page book includes a forward by Louisiana football legend Bert Jones of Ruston and more than 80 columns by Pierce on various topics.
Sub-titled "Reflections on Life in Rural Louisiana and Other Stuff," the book focuses primarily on growing up in North Louisiana but includes commentary on fishing trips, sandlot baseball games, high school proms, soda fountains, fifties music, childhood ailments and cures, batting rocks, special Christmases, grandkids, school reunions, old western movies, mumbledypeg, church services, sighting spaceships and assorted other subjects.
Pierce, a 1961 journalism graduate of Northwestern, worked at The Times-Picayune in New Orleans as executive sports editor and in other positions for several years before returning to NSU. He has been assistant to the president and vice-president at Northwestern for the past 20 years and also serves on the Journalism Department faculty.
In writing for The Natchitoches Times and other newspapers since the mid-1960's, Pierce has received statewide first-place awards for general interest columns, editorials, features, sports columns and news stories on deadline.
A master of ceremonies and after-dinner speaker at several hundred events across the state over the past three decades, Pierce established the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame on the NSU campus in Natchitoches. He also helped bring the filming of "Steel Magnolias" to Northwestern and Natchitoches and was co-editor of a book on the production of the movie.
"Prayer Meetings & Pink Corduroys" will be available for $14.95 in bookstores and other businesses the first week of December or it may be ordered by mail from Pierce Book, 709 Parkway, Natchitoches, La. 71457.