Presenting Sand and Norman Marmillion as the 2023 Harnett T. Kane Award Winner

Remarks By: Nathan Chapman

I had the honor of presenting the Louisiana Landmarks Society’s Harnett T. Kane Award to Sand and, posthumously, Norman Marmillion. To add research and perspective to my remarks, I called a few people who have known the honorees. Here is what I shared at the awards ceremony, held at the Pitot House, June 6, 2023.

Furniture conservator, David Broussard, said, “Just rescuing Laura and Columbia would have been enough to merit this award. But Norman and Sand Marmillion did so much more. They elevated the tourism of the River Road. They changed our perceptions of what is possible when operating a historic house museum. They were story tellers who told it like it was, in terms of our history. That’s a lifetime’s work, what they did.”

Let me take you back to the beginning, or at least my beginning, with Norman and Sand. I knew Norman was the manager of the Garyville Timbermill Museum. He and his wife Sand had this idea for opening their own house museum on the historic River Road between New Orleans and Baton Rouge—operating not as a non-profit, but a FOR-profit. In the same French Quarter apartment where I started my own marketing agency, Norman would come over for us to develop a written business plan for The Laura Plantation Company, Louisiana’s Creole Heritage Site. I recall that one of his astute observations was that Laura’s proximity to Oak Alley, already a well-established visitor destination, would be perfect for visitors who wished to visit two plantation homes before returning back to New Orleans or Baton Rouge. It would give me joy to say that I had something to do with the successful birth of Laura, but truthfully, as we worked on that business plan, I never dreamed of the heights that Norman and Sand would take Laura.

As a long-time employee at Laura, Jay Schexnaydre tells, “Norman was visionary. He had different ideas on how to present a historic house museum than what was presented at the time. Nobody talked about slavery. It was all moonlight and magnolias. Norman and Sand wanted to show the reality. Story-telling techniques could make that reality more interesting and educational. The stories left most people mesmerized.” It’s true. I remember going to Laura when there was no furniture. A house museum without furniture? As Sand Marmillion explained, in the early days, whatever money Laura had needed to go into things like stabilizing the house and other infrastructure needs.

But Norman not only had a degree in history, he had a background in film and video and even puppeteering, traveling Louisiana to teach folklore stories to school children. Sand’s degree is in cultural anthropology with an MFA in theater design. For a decade she taught at Tulane subjects like drama, speech and communication. They agreed that history did not need to be boring. Together, they created tours that were less lecture, and more of a well told, well-crafted story. And in those early days, the public not only ate it up, but they went back and told their friends. The word of mouth combined with media interviews on this new type of historic house museum began to put Laura on the map. But before you think that Sand and Norman were all show biz, they were deeply committed to historical research.

In my conversation with preservation architect Gene Cizek, he stressed to me—multiple times—their commitment to research: investing time, energy and money. One day, that research investment hit the jackpot. At the time Norman and Sand took over Laura Plantation, Laura Locoul and her family, who once lived at the plantation, and their descendants were long gone. They had sold the plantation in the late 1800s and left the state. But one time, Laura herself re-visited her former home, and sent a thank you note to the new owners—one of whom had saved it in a scrapbook. From that note, Sand and Norman learned that Laura’s married name was Gore, and that she had lived in St. Louis. They began calling every Gore in the St. Louis phone book. For those of you not familiar, the phone book was something of an early version of Google. Eventually they found Laura’s grandson who told them of a close friend to one of his aunts, a daughter of Laura. This elderly gentleman said he had some things that had belonged to Laura. Sand and Norman drove to St. Louis to visit him. When they arrived, on the dining room table was a scrapbook full of family photos and a memoir written by Laura herself—of her life, full of the history of the plantation and all its complexities. Sand says that she couldn’t help crying upon finding that Laura herself was crossing through time to give her story to—I believe—two people who knew better than anyone else how to tell her story.

Everyone I spoke to in preparing for these remarks talked about what a “phenomenal couple,” to use the words of River Road’s Michael Hopping, were Sand and Norman. “What a powerhouse of a pair,” he said. Sand and Norman shared enough values and talents and vision to respect each other and to head toward a common destiny, but they were different enough to complement each other, to each add their strengths to the greater whole. Several of the people with whom I spoke talked of Norman as an artist, with his cavasses being Laura Plantation—and Columbia Plantation, circa 1785—which he and Sand later acquired, moved and restored as a private home on the River Road.

But everyone spoke equally admiringly of Sand. In the early days she kept her job at Tulane because they needed the income. She would rise in the morning, take their daughter Frannie to school, drive to Laura to do whatever needed to be done, whether dealing with a contractor, mowing the grass, doing research or working with the tour guides. Then she would drive back to New Orleans to pick up Frannie from school, and then go teach a night course at Tulane. Later as Laura grew, she went to work there full time, working not only the research and tours but also making sure payroll was met, the taxes were paid and the insurance companies were wrestled to the ground. As David Broussard said, “Sand is someone who rolls up her sleeves and says let’s get this done.”

Sand and the other speakers told me of the adversities faced by Sand and Norman at Laura: the cataclysmic drops in tourism after 9/11, Hurricane Katrina and the pandemic. But add onto that the rebuilding of their home in New Orleans after it flooded during Katrina. And of course, the night that Laura caught fire.

I remember Dennis Alonzo and I seeing on the news images of Laura in flames. We decided to jump in our car to drive out there, hoping to somehow help, but really just wanting to be there for Sand and Norman. Sand told me later that there never was any question that they would rebuild it. And so they did, painstakingly, just like it was built in those early days. Even the rafters, unseen by the public, were built in the way of Louisiana’s early architecture. The challenges continue today, as Sand works to help her River Road community fighting the proposed monstrously large Greenfield grain elevator terminal. As I heard and thought about all the challenges that Sand and Norman have gone through along the River Road, it reminded me, in a way, of the story of Laura herself: how her own story reflected life in Louisiana in her time, and I marveled at how Sand and Norman’s adversities very much reflect many of the challenges of our times.

I have told you about my beginnings with Norman and Sand. And I think about the night of the fire as the middle. Now I’d like to close with a Norman story from near the end. One year ago at this same annual meeting of the Louisiana Landmarks Society, some members of the Keller family came to this meeting, hoping they would find someone who would help them find a solution for their endangered family plantation home, Keller Homeplace on the River Road. They caught the ear of Sandra Stokes who said, of course, we’ll come see if we can help you. Sandra recruited Michael Duplantier, Dennis Alonzo and myself to go with her. Luckily, Dennis and I were having dinner with Norman and Sand before the meeting so we asked Norman, too, who agreed without hesitation. We each tried to help in our way, but I think it’s fair to say that Norman, with his first-hand experience in transforming a decaying historic home, was by far the most knowledgeable, the most generous and most inspiring to the family.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, shows how this award is not just for saving two wonderful plantation buildings. It is, as David Broussard said, “a lifetime’s work—was what they did.”