By Tom Kelly
Editor and Publisher

Education is where you find it. Opportunity is what you make it. This could be the personal philosophy of Tony Lavespere, who says that most of the things he has done in his life before becoming a successful logging contractor have prepared him to anticipate, prevent, and solve problems in the logging business.

Lavespere Logging, Inc., based at Verda, a small village in the very north of Grant Parish, barely across the line from Winn, is by now one of the top operations in the Piney Woods. With a crew of eight veteran loggers, five truck drivers, and a fully mechanized operation, Lavespere Logging is recognized as a winner. How Tony, his brother Obie, and now two sons, Tony, Jr., and Jody, and the crew that he calls "family" got that way is an interesting story.

Straight out of Verda High School in 1966, Tony went into the U.S. Marine Corps during the Viet Nam War. He managed to be "in country" in Viet Nam in time for the famous Tet Offensive, before coming back to Louisiana in 1968, marrying high school sweetheart Becky Bryant, and starting work with a Natchitoches-based finance company. Tony worked in the finance business for seven years, in Natchitoches and Alexandria. He called it "the best education I ever had," learning about money lending, handling credit, and dealing with every kind of situation, up close and personal.

The Lavespere marriage produced three children, sons Tony, Jr., Jody, and daughter Hope. Mrs. Lavespere pursued a career of teaching at Verda public school; now retired from teaching, she is a vital part of the logging corporation, handling office chores, dealing with Department of Transportation and OSHA issues, daily bookkeeping. Daughter Hope Deen is following mother's footsteps as a teacher at Verda, and has presented the family with two grandchildren.

After seven years in the personal finance business, Tony continued his "education" by selling cars for a short while, learning about trading vehicles, "horse trading," and dealing with people.

Meanwhile, older brother Obie Lavespere worked as a logging contractor, in the pre-mechanized transition days of power saws, short wood, pole trailers, and backbreaking (literally) muscle work on the ground. Tony went to work for Obie as a log cutter.

"About the time I got good at it, I got a tree on me," Tony said, for an injury that kept him 42 days in bed. After a long recuperation, Tony went back to the woods, and in no more than three days a tree whacked him in the back, thus ending his career as a log cutter.

Next, around 1983, Tony bought a shortwood truck from Al Sanders of D'Ortego in Grant Parish. It was "one truck and a dream," Tony said of the venture which ultimately built into the present Lavespere Logging, Inc.

He pulled shortwood pulpwood on a rack trailer, then around 1985 added a pole trailer and worked for Murry Purvis, a wood buyer at Verda, then with Gary Bedgood, a contractor at Fairview-Alpha in Natchitoches parish. Bedgood lost most of his equipment in a fire, after which Lavespere and Bedgood pooled their trucks, and continued together for awhile. They decided to separate, and Lavespere got a skidder and loader, and began hauling for Martin Timber Co. at Castor, working for now-retired forester Bill Wieger.

Lavespere Logging grew, later hauling for Willamette Industries for 11 years, then for Weyerhaeuser after the acquisition.

At one point, Tony considered shutting down and retiring, but at a wiry, experienced mid-fiftyish, comfortable spot in his career, with his "family" of veteran crew members counting on jobs, he got back in September, 2002 with a contract with T.L. James & Co., logging their Crowell Land & Timber plantations in Central Louisiana.

That's where we caught up with Tony last month. The 93,000-plus acres managed by T.L. James' Ron Chance is a picture-perfect example of first-class plantation forestry. From a single hilltop, the view is of a clear-cut in the foreground, with the ground clean enough to plant turnip greens after the Lavespere Logging harvest. In the middle range is an even-age stand of loblollys of perhaps ten years, not quite ready for first thinning, to the far right another taller stand which could have been second-thinned not too long ago, and to the far left, a mature grove of beautiful, tall, straight pines of the type the Lavespere crew has just finished hauling to several mills in North and Central Louisiana for conversion to plywood and top grade lumber.

From the conversation, the forest is also managed for wildlife habitat, including deer, as Tony points toward the famous "Bird Camp" hunting lodge in the distance. (We are standing just off Bird Camp Road, at the Lavespere logging set where a skidder is piling logs for a loader, which fills the long double-bunk trailers for delivery to mills.

The Lavespere woods operation includes skidder operators Tony Lavespere, Jr., Bobby Yelverton, and Bobby Dubois; shear operators John McLaren, and Tony himself; stroke delimber operator Jody Lavespere; loader operators Kenneth Gillespie and Stacy Lafollette; sawhand Jack DuBois; and truck drivers Obie Lavespere, a member of the firm, Deion Oglesby, E.H. Lashley, Kenneth Chandler, and Wayne Attenberger.

In addition to logging, Tony is on the board of Louisiana Logging Council, a director of Vanguard Syn-Fuels at Pollock, a member of American Logging Council, and actively promotes reforestation, wildlife, and environmentally sound forestry. He is a Master Logger, and all his crew members are trained in first aid, safety, and Best Management Practices.

For recreation, Tony and Obie and their wives enjoy trips by motorhome to the NASCAR races at Talledega and other locations.

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