“I THINK IF YOU WERE DOING A DOCUMENTARY,” begins Mike Calkins, “you would want to tell the story of a young man who, with almost no education, from a rural
town in south Louisiana, came back from World War I and turned something into a multi-million dollar, 100 year-old brand that still produces a great product.” There’s a slight
pause, and then comes the smile of a proud grandson. “And of course, that man was my grandfather, Joe Huval, and that brand is Evangeline Maid Bread.”
In the latter part of the second decade of the 1900s, infantryman Joe Huval was in Europe fighting for his country. “He was stationed in France and assigned to be a baker,” recalls his grand-daughter Nanette Guchereau Pirie. “Luckily, he spoke french which helped him when he’d go into villages, talk to the people and find out how they made their bread. Then, he’d add his own special touches and make the bread.”
But even as he was baking bread and feeding his fellow soldiers, Huval was sending money home to his young wife to help her with living expenses in Acadiana. The thing is, she was living with her parents and didn’t spend any of that money; it was put aside and waiting for Huval’s return. “When he returned to Youngsville, my grandfather took that money (about $50) and bought his first baking pans and supplies,” says Pirie. “So, those dollars he sent home from Europe was essentially the seed money for what would become Evangeline Maid Bread.”
August 19, 1919 signaled the start of the Huval Baking Company, right there in the family kitchen in Youngsville, with Huval baking the bread and then peddling it, going door-todoor. Slowly but surely, he outgrew the space, moved into Lafayette, and eventually settled on the corner of Simcoe and St. John streets in Lafayette in 1937. He had 18 employees, all of whom became extended family members. “Papa Joe was a very generous man, and he was very loyal, too,” explains 82- year old Adam Mouton, Huval’s oldest living grandchild. “If you worked at the bakery for him, you had a job for life unless you really messed up. He took care of people.”
Huval also took care of the community. Pirie recalls how - even before that move to Simcoe - in the heart of the Great Depression, her grandfather did his best to help the residents of Lafayette survive. “He’d been able to purchase some larger quantities of basic ingredients like flour, but the smaller, competing bakeries in the city couldn’t do so. He gave them some of those essentials so they could stay in business and feed their families and employees. That’s the kind of man he was.”
As the company grew and expanded its reach outside of Lafayette in the late 1930s (going south to St. Mary and Iberia parishes), it was time to create the trademark, and lock down the name we all know so well: Evangeline Maid Bread.
“My mother, Mary Helen Huval, was the oldest daughter, and she became the first Evangeline Maid put on the bread wrapper,” says Pirie. “She was in her late teens or early twenties, and they did not want the ‘Evangeline Maid’ to look like a little girl. She posed for it, a man at the bakery did the sketch and sent it in, they took her picture and added the logo. She was quite proud of it.”
Joe and Nanette Huval had 10 children (two of whom died shortly after birth), and for a number of years Evangeline Maid was literally a family business. “There were six daughters and two sons, and all of the kids worked at the bakery at some point,” offers Mouton. “They made pastries, which we sold in the retail shop.” In terms of careers, adds Calkins, the two boys planted roots in the company, at least for a while. “Uncle Joe (Jr.) was involved in operations and delivery, and Uncle Pat worked in management and sales.”
It was an exciting and most special time, furthers Mouton, who worked there in high school and college “Hot bread would come out of the oven, and I would dump ém out.” Evangeline Maid Bread ruled in Acadiana. “The smell, ah, the smell. Wow. You could smell our baking bread all across the city.”
In 1947, Huval and Evangeline Maid Bread took on a partner as Lafayette businessman Frem Boustany purchased a 50% stake in the Huval Baking Company. “Mr. Boustany had a great, successful business background and brought some really creative ideas to Evangeline Maid,” says Mouton. One such innovation brought to south Louisiana? The resealable bread wrapper.
Thirteen years later, came the unveiling of what would become a structural Lafayette icon and special memory of this author’s youth: a billboard of sorts, featuring the super-sized, slowly spinning loaf of Evangeline Maid Bread. “Amazing that it’s survived,” smiles Calkins, “because I believe it’s quite old.” And the fact that the giant loaf is still revolving and still grabs the attention of children of all ages when they drive by? “A spinning loaf of bread coupled with the smell of baking bread is hard to pass up!”
And approving that ultra-sized attention-getter was one of Huval’s final moves with Evangeline Maid because, shortly thereafter, he sold his interest in the company to Boustany. “Selling the company was a very big decision for my grandfather because that was his life,” recalls Pirie. “But he was at an age that he needed to retire. He had land in Broussard, had built a house, had a farm and a ranch.”
But why not keep Evangeline Maid in the Huval family? “None of the boys wanted to take over the company,” explains Mouton. “They didn’t want any hard feelings, didn’t want to make decisions, and didn’t want to earn big money while other family members just got dividends.” And Pirie adds that a Huval presence was still going to be there. “He had a good offer, and it was going to be a big change. But the world wasn’t going to come to an end. My dad and my uncle were still there, so those in the family who wanted to work there still had jobs.”
Note: By way of elementary school field trips, I made at least two or three visits to Evangeline Maid in the late sixties or early seventies, and the thing I remember the most was a parting gift the company gave to each visitor: a mini-loaf of Evangline Maid Bread. “And the mini-loaves? Not only did they give those out during field trips; they also threw out the mini-loaves during Mardi Gras parades,” chuckles Mouton.
Boustany owned the company until 1976, at which time he sold it to Flowers Industries (now Flowers Foods). The company that started with one (Joe Huval), then grew to 18
workers, now has over 200 employees who-- still in the 87,000 square-foot facility on W. Simcoe Street-- bake more than a million pounds of bread and buns each and every week.
Huval, meanwhile, enjoyed his property in Broussard and relished in having his ever-growing family visit on a regular basis. “24 cousins, we all went to school together, all had dinner at my grandfather and grandmother’s house every Sunday,” says Pirie. “We played together and we all got along.” And what kind of bread was served at these Sunday dinners? “You couldn’t bring any other bread besides Evangeline Maid into the house,” remembers Mouton. “If you did, and if my grandfather noticed, you’d catch hell!!”
Joe Huval died in September of 2011 at the age of 92, and Pirie says, even then, the family was reminded of his most generous heart. “At his funeral, we had so many people come up to us and say things like, ‘If it wasn’t for your grandfather, I wouldn’t have had this job, and this opportunity to make it in life’.”
The legacy of Joe Huval’s Evangeline Maid Bread, how it remains a major player (taking up major shelf space) in southern grocery stores, rings loudly with his grandchildren. “His is the quintessential rags-to-riches story, right in our own backyard,” surmises Calkins. “He was a wonderful man, a community-minded philanthropist when perhaps it wasn’t fashionable to be one.”
And as for the bread itself? Mouton says, “It was a good product at a decent price. People gotta eat, as my grandfather would say. Good product, not cheap, better than a lot of what you see today.” Calkins believes, over the course of 104 years, Evangeline Maid has certainly earned its place in the hearts, minds, tastebuds and memories of so very many people.
“I think the logo and the name are synonymous with bread in south Louisiana.”