Cattle Festival Citizen of the Year is Gerard Sellers

The 66th Annual Cattle Festival announced that Gerard Sellers has been selected at the Citizen of the Year for the 2014 Cattle Festival.
Activities for the festival begin Sept. 13 with the pageants at Abbeville High School.
The festival weekend will begin Oct. 9 with the honoree banquet, where Sellers will be recognized. The festival will continue on Friday and Saturday. The parade will roll at 1 p.m. through Abbeville.
Sellers is no stranger to Abbeville. He had his hand in many projects that benefited Abbeville and the parish, which is why the Cattle Festival recognized him for all his accomplishments.
Here are some of his projects he helped create:
• Gerard, with then Abbeville City Councilman Mark Piazza, then State Representative Sammy Theriot, and Theriot’s Assistant Rochelle Dugas did the research and worked with the Vermilion Parish Police Jury to form the Vermilion Parish Tourist Commission. Gerard served as a member of the Tourist Commission for 2 years.
• In the 1980s & 1990s Gerard received grants from the Vermilion Parish Police Jury, Louisiana Division of the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities to create the traveling exhibit titled “From the Rivers to the Prairies: A History of Vermilion Parish” which can still be seen at the Vermilion Parish Tourist Center. Additional grants from the Louisiana Endowment and the Ziegler Museum funded a second exhibit titled “Islands Of The Marsh, A Study of the Louisiana Wetlands” based on photos taken in Vermilion Parish. The exhibit traveled throughout the state.
•Documentaries entitled Chenier Au Tigre, and Alligator Hunters, A Louisiana Legacy, as well as a series of eight short documentaries were seen on Louisiana Public Broadcasting’s (LPB) En Francais TV series in the early 1980s. Alligator Hunters, A Louisiana Legacy was broadcast on LPB’s satellite and viewed across the nation. All were based on photography and interviews done in Vermilion Parish in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
• Gerard was mentioned in National Geographic’s Hidden Corners, and was a guest on Scott Simon’s Weekend Addition on National Public Radio in the 1980s. Gerard and his father Murphy “Red” Sellers appeared on a TV Documentary aired in Japan in 2000. All were promoting Vermilion Parish.
Today, Gerard has a dual residency, both in Abbeville and New Orleans, and spends most week ends and time when not working in New Orleans, in Abbeville where he visits his father Murphy “Red” Sellers.
He maintains his voting rights in Vermilion Parish and considers Abbeville to be his real home.
Gerard works as a location manager and scout in the film industry for over 28 years. Some of the films that he has worked on during that period are: Belizair The Cajun, the remake of The Blob, Skeleton Key, The Apostle, Runaway Jury and the Academy Award winning 12 Years A Slave. Gerard Sellers website can be seen at www.louisianafilmlocations.com