Bids sought for Louisiana hospital demo

A parish (county) government in Louisiana will reportedly soon seek demolition contracting bids to bring down a hospital in Eunice, Louisiana.

An early July news item posted to the website of The Eunice News, based in that Louisiana city, says the Acadia Parish government will be seeking bids to demolish the former Moosa Hospital building. The newspaper says the structure has been vacant since 2005, when hospital operations were moved to the Acadian Medical Center.

The Eunice News says Acadian Medical board chair Newton “Chip” Thibodeaux Jr. confirmed to it the bidding process is about to be underway, adding that “the finances for the demolition finally came together.”

A bid notice for unspecified pre-demolition abatement work to be performed at the hospital already has been posted to a bid clearinghouse website.

The posting does not specifically mentioned asbestos, lead or any other material, but states merely, “This project consists of the abatement of former hospital.” The notice then spells out how bid documents can be obtained, and that a pre-bid conference will be held July 20. The bid notice also indicates Lafayette, Louisiana-based Ritter Consulting Engineers is involved in the bidding process.

A (possible) footnote concerning the hospital’s history can be found in books written concerning the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

The 2021 book “The Murder Trial of JFK,” written by James O. Chipman, claims a woman named Melba Christine Marcades accepted a ride with two men from Miami to Dallas in November 1963. During that trip, the three went to a nightclub in Eunice.

Marcades later claimed the men told her about a plan to assassinate the president, and then threw her from a moving car near Eunice. Several days later she was questioned about the incident while a patient at Moosa Memorial Hospital, according to Chipman.

Another author covered the incident eight years earlier. “A Rose by Many Other Names: Rose Cherami & the JFK Assassination,” by Todd C. Elliott, bases its 98 pages of text around statements given to police by Marcades (aka Rose Cherami) after her reported incident in Eunice.