Basin’s man for all seasons dead at 80

Not that long ago, Greg Guirard paused on the stoop of his sprawling cabin on Bayou Mercier, near Catahoula, and heaved a sigh.
“These days I hardly know which way to turn when I step out the door,” he said.
He could go run crawfish traps, or float an ancient cypress “sinker” log out of the swamp for its exotic wood. He could take more of the vivid photographs that bring the wild beauty of the Atchafalaya Basin to so many offices and coffee tables, or he could write another book about paradise lost in the big middle of this state. Or go before an environmental group and lecture about paradise still being chipped away by development and exploitation.
Actually he had set aside that particular morning to entertain the son and nephew of Robert Kennedy Jr., environmental if not political royalty. People of all ilk came from far and wide to his dank, moss-draped corner of the world to be in the presence of Greg Guirard. He was well into his 70s but mentally and physically robust, with rugged good looks, soft-spoken and plain-spoken, like a kindly guru.
Greg died last Friday, June 2, 2017, at the age of 80. He went into the hospital with a respiratory complaint and died, news reports said, of meningitis. “Unexpected” doesn’t quite convey the shock many are feeling.
“He was the most amazing person I ever met in my life,” said Dean Wilson of Bayou Sorrel, director of Atchafalaya Basinkeeper, a nonprofit environmental watchdog. “Whenever I’m faced with a problem or trouble, I think to myself, what would Greg do?”
“He really gave the face to the Cajun people and the people of the Atchafalaya Basin,” said Jody Meche of Henderson, president of the Louisiana Crawfish Producers Association – West. “People all over the world wouldn’t know about the Basin and the families and the way of life if it would not have been for Greg Guirard.”
Greg was an educated man, an English professor, with deep roots in the Cajun country of St. Martin Parish. His grandfather and mentor was Wade O. Martin Sr.,
who sheriff of St. Martin Parish for eight years and served on the Louisiana Public Service Commission from 1932 to 1956. Greg had also been a guide, run crew boats, worked in a sawmill. He was authentic enough in looks and accent that visiting filmmakers cast him as part of the scenery.
More than anything else, Greg was principled. A lot of people pop off that they’re going to leave the country if this or that politician gets elected, but Greg actually did it. When Richard Nixon was reelected in 1972, Greg, a married man with kids, moved his family to Central America, where they stayed for most of the decade, Greg teaching English to make ends meet.
Greg earned an undergraduate degree in agronomy in 1960 and a master’s degree in English in 1963, both at LSU.
Books by Greg Guirard include “Inherit the Atchafalaya” with C. Ray Brassieur (2007), “Psycho Therapy for Cajuns” (2006), “Atchafalaya Autumn” (1995), “The Land of Dead Giants” (1991), “Cajun Families of the Atchafalaya” (1989), and “Seasons of Light in the Atchafalaya Basin” (1983).
His film credits include “Old Cajun Fisherman” in 2009’s “In the Electric Mist”; “Man” in “Shy People,” 1987; and in 1981, half of a “Cajun Couple” in “Southern Comfort.”
Greg was born on May 19, 1937, the son