Through it all

Roy Serie almost didn’t meet the love of his life.
The then 15-year-old didn’t really want to tag along with his friends some 35 years ago but he decided to join them none the less. Whether it was peer pressure or boredom, the decision was one the now 50-year-old is forever grateful for, as it turned out to be the fateful day that Roy met his future wife Shelia.
“There were these two guys in my neighborhood that were going to visit these girls, and I just went because they were going,” Roy said. “I saw this little black girl looking at me, and it was love at first sight. When you have the person you love that is also your best friend that is a beautiful thing.”
Roy is grateful for those 30 years he had with his wife, especially now the home they shared is far more empty since her death nearly six years ago.
“I think about her all the time,” Roy said. “What has given me the strength to go on is that I feel that God didn’t want me to see my wife suffer. I don’t know if I could handle watching her slowly die in front of me.”

The life of a Bulldog
Serie grew up spending many an afternoon playing football in the street with his older brothers. After falling in love with the game at James Stephens Elementary, Serie would eventually develop into an all-district linebacker-offensive lineman for Ville Platte High in the early 1980’s.
His favorite memories from his Bulldog playing days are when Ville Platte High played powerhouse John Curtis in the state quarterfinals his freshman year and the double-overtime game against Church Point his junior season, which featured future Louisiana Sports Hall of Famer and NFL wide receiver Mark Carrier.
After graduating from Ville Platte High in the spring of 1983, Serie decided to walk on at McNeese State. Serie would spend three years on the Cowboys’ practice squad before finally moving on from his dream of playing big-time college football.
“I learned a lot about how to go through adversity,” Roy remembered. “I wasn’t given that opportunity to play. I remember it came down to me and this scholarship guy on who would make the traveling squad. They chose him.”
Serie may have been disappointed by his playing career coming to an end, but that didn’t stop him from getting his bachelor’s degree in health and physical education in 1989. The following summer Serie began his teaching and coaching career at Mamou Lower Elementary.
Serie taught physical education at the school while serving as a volunteer assistant at Mamou High for football, boys basketball and even coaching the girls basketball team for three seasons.
In 1994, Serie seized the opportunity to coach at his alma mater. He would serve as an assistant coach for both the football team and boys basketball as well as coach the boys track team to a state runner-up finish during the next 13 years.
Those nearly two decades spent as an assistant was a learning experience for both Roy and Shelia.
“I learned through the years how to be the best assistant coach I could be,” Roy said. “As I was learning how to be an assistant she learned how to be a coach’s wife. I thought I was a pretty good husband and dad – but I probably could have spent more time at home – but she never made me feel guilty about it. She never tried to deter me. I spent a lot of time in that stadium by myself, but she always made our house feel like a home.”
And according to former Ville Platte High coach, and close friend of Roy’s, Tracey Jagneaux, there was no bigger fan of Roy than his wife.
“I can tell you this much, his wife was his biggest supporter,” Jagneaux said. “She loved him and loved Ville Platte High. She was always at the games and never wavered in her support of him and the school she graduated from. Sheila was indeed a lady of grace and dignity.”

The dream job &
the nightmare
In 2007, on his third attempt at applying for the position, all that sacrifice paid off as Serie was named the head football coach of the Bulldogs.
“It was a great feeling,” Roy said. “At that point I felt that this is my shot. You walk on the field, and you remember all the memories. I just felt good about it.”
In his five seasons at the helm, Ville Platte High would win two district championships, make the playoffs three times – including a 32-13 opening-round win over North Caddo in 2011 – and defeated crosstown rival Sacred Heart in the Tee Cotton Bowl all five seasons, snapping a seven-game winning streak by the Trojans.
Roy along with Sacred Heart coach Dutton Wall was also honored as “Uncommon Heroes” by Tyndale Publishing Company in 2009 for promoting Christian values in their communities and even got the chance to meet Super Bowl-winning coach Tony Dungy.
As joyous as this time was for Roy it was a period that also was filled with unexpected heartache.
In 2003, Roy’s wife was diagnosed with breast cancer.
“It was something that was a life changing moment,” Roy said. “I can still remember the day she called me and told me that the growth was cancerous. When you think you got everything under the control and then fate kicks you in the butt. From that day forward we decided that we weren’t going to lie down.”
The two fought her battle with cancer for seven years with surgeries and doses of chemotherapy. First the doctor visits were in nearby Opelousas, then Baton Rouge and finally in Houston, Texas. As the years passed, Roy’s daily routine consisted of taking care of his wife before school, going home for lunch and then again right before practice.
Roy’s love and dedication to his wife was immense.
“I remember the first time I went with them to the Cancer Center at Anderson,” daughter Kiara Serie said. “She was in so much pain, and he just held onto her and told her that she was going to be okay. Deep down I know it was hurting him, but he couldn’t show that it was hurting him. In the midst of that he was still coaching and still being so selfless. I don’t know if I could have done it.”
“It was tough for Roy to go through what he did with his wife’s sickness, but he never let that get in the way of his coaching or teaching ability,” Jagneaux said. “He was a rock for his wife and was able to juggle taking care of her and doing his job. He never shirked his duty as a husband, father, coach or teacher. I always thought to myself, I did not know if I could do what he did and do it as well as he did.”
In the spring of 2010, Roy began to feel that he couldn’t do it either. Not the taking care of his wife part. That he gladly did. For Roy, he felt that he needed less distractions and needed to focus more time on his ailing wife, and he began contemplating taking a sabbatical from his dream job.
“I was at the point that I felt I couldn’t continue to teach and coach and take care of my wife,” Roy said
But it would be Kiara that would change his mind
“I remember she told me ‘Daddy, you teach me not to quit and now you are going to quit?’” Roy said.
He didn’t take that sabbatical.

May 5, 2010
There wasn’t anything especially unique about the morning of Wednesday, May 5, 2010. Roy like always was taking Sheila to University of Texas’s MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston for another treatment. But two days earlier, Roy did have a moment with his wife of 21 years.
“We always believed that we were going to beat it,” Roy said. “But that final week is when we were coming to the realization with some things. That Monday morning, for the first time she looked me in the eyes and said ‘Baby, I am tired’. I said without even thinking to go ahead and rest me and Kiara will be okay. Looking back now I felt like I gave her up to God.”
The couple’s daughter meanwhile was gearing up for graduation on that last day of school and was nervous about her senior portraits.
“I was so stressed out, because I didn’t know if my senior pictures were going to come in or not,” Kiara remembered. “Then they finally came in, and so I called and said, ‘Mom, my senior pictures are finally in.’ And she was like, ‘Good. I told you they were going to be in. Well okay we are on our way home, and I will talk to you later. Love you.’ That was the last time we talked.”
That afternoon shortly after 3 p.m., Roy and Shelia were involved in a five-vehicle crash on U.S. 165 near Fenton.
According to a report from the Louisiana State Police, the F-150 truck driven by Roy had crossed the median and struck another vehicle. Debris from the collision struck three other vehicles, but no one in those vehicles were injured.
Shelia and Shannon Cox, an occupant in another vehicle, died.
“In a nutshell, I felt that I was tired,” Roy said. “In my mind, I was going to pull over, and in my mind that’s what I did. When I thought I was waking up from the nap, it was all over. I was waking up from a bad dream, but it’s not a dream.”
Kiara meanwhile found out from a cousin that her parents were involved in an accident. The Bulldog senior waited in the office of principal Kelli LaFleur.
“The fear of the unknown was making me crazy,” Kiara said. “I sat in her office for 35-45 minutes before I found out something. I was devastated.”
It wasn’t long after that moment that Jagneaux had to inform the Bulldog players of what had happened.
“When the accident happened, I was running a spring practice for him and his nephew came to tell me what had happened,” Jagneaux said. “I was speechless and heartbroken. We immediately called practice and brought all of the players together and prayed together on the field.”
For Roy, who suffered moderate injuries in the crash, the pain of that day still lingers years later.
“My wife gave me strength,” Roy said. “She was the centerpiece to our family. She was the big reason I became the man I was, and I miss her.”

Finding solace
In the months following the accident, the high school and community rallied around Roy. Nearly six years since the fateful day and Roy still thanks those who helped him like Eric LaFleur, Dirk Deville, Toni Hamlin, Dr. Tim Fontenot, Jennifer Vidrine, Jagneaux to name just a few and of course his family.
“My in-laws and mother-in-law continued to love me,” Roy said. “That gave me a lot of strength.”
Roy also leaned heavily on his faith during that time.
“That’s the only way I could have made it,” Roy said. “They couldn’t believe that I could continue to teach and coach and be a father. Without God, I couldn’t have done it.”
Roy remained as a teacher and coach while awaiting trial and led the Bulldogs back to the playoffs in 2011, his final season with the team. Then in March of 2012, Roy pleaded guilty in the Jeff Davis Parish Courthouse to vehicular homicide in the deaths of his wife and of Cox. Roy was sentenced to 10 years at hard labor with seven years suspended.
Roy would spend most of his incarnation at the Pine Prairie Correctional Facility before being transferred to East Baton Rouge.
“The challenge was I knew that I was going to have to go prison, but I didn’t know for how long or where,” Roy said. “I was just going to try to be the best person I could be. That’s the attitude I took.”
Roy wasn’t the only Serie that had to deal with an emotional adjustment of him being placed behind bars.
“I never thought I would be visiting my daddy in jail,” Kiara said. “It was very emotional the first time I visited him while he was at Pine Prairie. I didn’t cry in front of him, but I did cry afterwards. It was just so surreal to see someone who didn’t even have a speeding ticket to be behind bars.
“I couldn’t talk to him when I wanted to,” Kiara said. “I had to wait on him to call me. It was very emotional. I had to train myself to get used to it. It took awhile. It was an emotional adjustment.”
Roy leaned on his faith and the support of family and friends during his time behind bars, but the man who spent 23 years as an educator also found solace in teaching. He helped five other inmates obtain their GEDs.
Roy’s time behind bars was eye opening.
“It was gratifying and at the same time, going to prison it opened me up,” Roy said. “It was like a burden lifted off of me. I could actually face everything. A lot of us are always looking from the outside, but I also had the opportunity to look from the inside out.
“When you get to see your people it is a good feeling. There are some guys that never get visits. No contact with the outside world. It is a different world. A whole different way of living. It gives you courage.”

A new life begins
While Roy was serving his time, Kiara was pursuing her dream of graduating from college.
Kiara was originally supposed to go University of Louisiana-Lafayette right out of high school, but to make that happen she had to make a A in a class in which she had a B. The day of the accident, Kiara was supposed to take a final test in hopes of improving her GPA so she could have received full aid from the Tuition Opportunity Program for Students (TOPS).
Instead Kiara stayed close to home as she attended LSU-Eunice before eventually graduating from Remington College with an associate’s degree. The now 23-year-old currently works at Lafayette General Hospital.
“I really had to step out on faith and trust God that everything will be okay,” Kiara said. “It was hard. I know you are not supposed to question God, but when everything was happening I did ask him why this was happening?
“But I kept my faith and it has made me a stronger and better person.”
That faith helped both Roy and Kiara get through his three years in prison, and that faith was on display once Roy was released from prison earlier this year and reunited with his daughter.
“It was great feeling, but it was scary too,” Roy said. “I was just thankful to God that he got me through it.”
“We stayed up all day and all night waiting for him to come back from Baton Rouge,” Kiara said. “I was so excited that I couldn’t sleep. The minute he came in we hugged and cried. We held onto each other for about 20 minutes not letting go. It was amazing.”
Roy meanwhile has a job working as a helper at a plant in Lake Charles. He misses teaching immensely but has accepted the fact that his time molding young minds in a classroom is over. That doesn’t mean Roy doesn’t believe that he still can’t reach people.
“Let’s face it,” Roy said. “It’s just not my story. There was another life lost despite my wife’s. She had a child. I think about that family a lot.
“I just know there is reason for everything. I am just hoping that my life, my story can help someone else.”