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ORAL HISTORY
Melinda and Donald Punch
Donald Punch was a shrimper all his life, following in the boot steps of his father, until his own son’s Type 1 diabetes forced him onto land. In the 1980s, the small, public elementary school in Lockport, Louisiana, didn’t staff a nurse who could administer the kind of care a child with daily medical needs required. Donald and his wife, Melinda, then a high school physical sciences teacher, decided to open a seafood market so that Donald could get to his son at school as frequently as necessary.
Donald misses life on the water and dreams of once again owning a small shrimp boat that he could man alone, but Punch’s Seafood Market is going strong and provides a more stable income than shrimping does these days. Besides that, his sons, Travis and Jason, need an outlet for their crabs. Both of the Punch boys chose fishing as a career, after having spent much of their childhood and adolescence on or near the water, and they sell their catch to Melinda and Donald.
