Celebration of Life: Louisiana's Woodstock fell short

It was an outdoor rock festival that almost wasn’t -- and in retrospect should not have been. It was the “Celebration of Life” at Cypress Pointe Plantation in McCrea, scheduled from June 21-28, 1971.
Last week a documentary on the event was shown to a capacity crowd at the Fox Theater in Marksville (see related story). This article will look at a little more of the history of that festival, including accounts by a few who were there.
A few days before the festival it was banned by a local ordinance for health and safety reasons. Promoters appealed. The ban was upheld by one court and then overturned by an appeals court on June 22, 1971 -- one day after the festival was supposed to have started. By then, thousands of young people were clogging the road to the 500-acre site along the banks of the Atchafalaya River, refusing to believe State Police who were turning them away and telling them the concert was off.
When they were finally allowed to enter the concert grounds, they had to wait until Thursday, June 24, before the first act took to the hastily constructed stage. The hot, humid conditions mixed with summer rain storms made the site what one on-line blogger termed “Heaven and Hell occupying the same space at the same time.”
A Saturday, June 26, thunderstorm proved to be the festival’s finale. It closed the next day.
The event started late, ended early and was marked by a reported four drownings, one death by overdose, a construction worker impaled while working on the soundstage who miraculously survived and a man who was shot in the thigh during a melee surrounding a drug arrest.
There were numerous beatings by three motorcycle gangs that terrorized skinny-dippers and sunbathers by shooting at the river so they could, as one biker said at the time, “see the chicks’ boobies bounce” as they ran in fear away from the river.
There were at least a dozen reported rapes, countless robberies and over 100 arrests for drugs.
The summer of 1967 is known as “The Summer of Love.” The summer of 1971 certainly is not.
Several local people, now eligible for AARP membership rather than the Flower Power generation of their youth, were at McCrea during that week and shared their memories.
“I was 18,” Johnny Vead of Hickory Hill said. “ For an old country boy just out of high school, I had never seen so many topless women. I was working for my uncle, Wade Bonnette, who had been contracted by the music festival to drill two water wells,” Vead continued. “They gave me two tickets to a concert, otherwise I would not have been able to go. I just went one day.”
Vead said he can’t remember who played that night, “but it was very loud. You couldn’t get close to the bandstand because there were so many people.”
Perhaps the memory most associated with Celebration of Life is of the sea of naked “hippies” bathing and swimming in the Atchafalaya and lying on the muddy banks of that swift-flowing river.
Paul Borrel Jr. of Marksville was also on-site as a worker, working with his father to dig seven water wells.
“There were a lot of people from out-of-state,” Borrel said. “I met people from New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.” Borrel was 24 and had just graduated pharmacy school at the University of La.-Monroe -- then known as Northeast Louisiana University. “There were a lot of people doing drugs, all kinds of drugs,” he said. “People were smoking marijuana and other drugs.”
Borrel said the police were not doing anything about the drug use when he was there. State Police were monitoring the perimeters and the gate, but not making any arrests at that time.
“McCrea had one little grocery store, and it sold out of everything,” Borrel said. “There were a lot of people swimming naked and lying on the beach. It seemed that most of them had all their clothes off.” Borrel said a lot of the visitors “got really bad sunburns -- so bad that it made them sick.”
He said they came down from the North woefully unprepared for a Louisiana June in the open air.
“I went every day to work on the water wells, so I got in free during the day,” he said. “I only attended one night session that I had to pay to attend to hear the concert.” Borrel also could not remember the performers on that night.
“It looked like a harsh environment,” he said. “It was very hot and humid. There was no main building big enough where people could gather to get out of the rain and heat. They were just thrown out in a field. I wouldn’t have wanted to be out there all night.”
Janet Riddle of Marksville went to the concert as a 19-year-old newlywed “because my parents couldn’t tell me I couldn’t go,” she said with a laugh. She attended with a small group of Avoyelleans. She only stayed a few hours -- and that’s all she wanted to stay.
“We went to see what it was all about,” she said. “It was hot. People were cooling off by covering their bodies with mud. I was leery about eating or drinking anything there,” she added.
Despite the unpleasant conditions, she said her recollection of that time is of being excited by the new experience.
Dee Galland of Hessmer did not attend the festival, but she has what may be a very rare memento -- a VHS cassette taken by a friend who was there. The video focuses on the frolicking of nude men and women on the beach and in the water; some brave and pain-oblivious souls sliding down a muddy slope into the river; and some smoking marijuana. There is also a series of still shots of other aspects of the festival.