It was full circle for Earline Hava as she celebrated her 90th birthday Sunday in Luling.
Over 100 family members and friends arrived to enjoy the day with Hava over food and music at The Old Church Luling. It was obviously a special occasion for Hava, but the venue carried great significance as well for her. While The Old Church Luling is a venue for special events today, years ago it was, indeed, a church – the very church she attended weekly mass along with her family, and the very church she got married in.
The Luling native was right at home.
“It was fabulous,” Hava said of the party.
When Hava’s daughter Pam learned her mother’s old church had become an event venue, she said it became a no-brainer to be the site for Hava’s 90th birthday.
“It was a shoo in,” Pam said. “Because of the history she has there, when I learned the date was open, we had to go for it. It’s full circle for her.”
Nieces, nephews, children and grandchildren, grandnieces and nephews, it was a large turnout for a large family – and a tree of branches that grew from the big individual families started by Hava and her sisters.
For years, Hava has gathered with her sisters and their families for holidays, cooking and other fun events. Sunday represented another on a grander scale of attendance.
Hava remembers the old church fondly.
“When you went to Hahnville (to church, the family had to drive), but in Luling we could walk right there,” Hava said. “Each family had to buy a pew. I don’t know how much. It might have been pennies. But that pew’s where we sat every time we went to church. And when I got older, we sang in the choir.”
She estimated she was in that church more than 1,000 times in her life – and not just for mass.
“It would host sock hops,” she said. “And I know I went.”
As Hava grew up, she went to Hahnville High School. Her family lived on Luling Avenue, right by the local train tracks.
“We’d go to LSU games, and just ride around … we were typical teenagers,” she said. “We’d go roller skating a lot, and we went to drive in movies.”
The biggest difference between Luling now and then?
“The population,” Hava said. “We had no red lights … one drug store, one grocery store.”
In adulthood, Hava worked at St. Charles Parish Hospital for 22 years in the receiving department of its warehouse.
Pam said her mother is still quite the ball of energy.
“She’s so active,” Pam said. “She walks, talks, drives, dances, drinks – she’s still going strong.”
