Celebrate Father's Day By Telling Us Your Story!

J.W. STINE
EARLY YEARS
Jackson William Stine was born to Sulphur, Louisiana residents Andrew Stine and Elma Landry in 1918. His father followed the oil fields so Stine and his family moved around in his early years. He spent much of that time in Oklahoma. His father died when he was young so his mother came back to her family in Sulphur. JW’s grandfather built a home for his widowed daughter and her four children. JW was 11 years old when this happened.
JW did not have continual schooling in the years the family traveled. As a result he was 20 years old when he graduated.
“Many people told me I needed to get out of school and work. But I knew it was important for me to have the degree. I pushed it until I graduated. And I also loved playing football. I played quarterback for Sulphur High School for four years. Back then Vinton was our biggest rival. I remember the last year I played we beat Vinton. I went to Normal College, (today Northwestern State University), on a football scholarship. The other sport I loved was boxing. I was a Golden Gloves boxer and I never remember losing a fight.”
THE LOVE OF MY LIFE
“I knew Dee Dee Drost in high school. We had a small class of around 69 in the class of 1939, so everyone knew each other. I had a good friend who had a car and we would go to the river. He wanted to see the Stelly girl who was a good friend of Dee Dee’s. So with that first double date Dee Dee and I began dating and did so for the next five years.
J.W. and Dee Dee were married on January 14, 1944 just before he was sent overseas to fight for his country in World War ll. They remained married for 67 happy years raising seven children, six sons and one daughter. Their names in order of oldest to youngest are Richard, Gary, Janie, Jay, Dennis and David (the twins) and Tim. There are 31 grandchildren and 39 great grandchildren, with three on the way.
The couple have been members of Our Lady of Prompt Succor Church of Sulphur since they were married. Stine has been a member of the Knights of Columbus and the American Legion for many years. In 1989, he was awarded Citizen of the Year in the Diocese of Lake Charles.
In 2008, J.W. was quoted in a newspaper article for the Sulphur paper The Southwest Daily News, “Dee Dee and I are together every day. We don’t go many places alone. All my sons are in this area. Janie lives in Houston but she is here every few weeks. She leaves for a while and then she’ll be back again.
“Every one of the family is so close. We’re here in this building (Stine Lumber Company corporate offices on South Huntington Street in Sulphur) every day. When someone sneezes we know. We’ve always been here, the children grew up together, and we’ve remained real close through the business.
“Our family business has been a binding experience. We don’t argue. We may discuss, but there is no bickering.“I know where we’ll all be on Christmas day. We’ll be out at Tim’s. He built a house for a huge family. It’s the ideal place for our parties. I’m really looking forward to our day together. I’m really a very grateful man,” Stine said.
On April 30 of this year Dee Dee passed away which left a big hole in J.W.’s heart as well as all of the children. He still gets around well at 93, spending much of his time with his kids, and he makes the best of life considering the loss of the love of his life, Dee Dee.
MILITARY YEARS
World War II had begun in Europe when Germany attacked Poland in September of 1939 just a few months after J.W. graduated from high school. Many young men volunteered to serve their country. J.W. and his best friend from high school and later business partner J.C. Carlin were no different. They joined the war effort at the same time. ”J. C. and I decided to enlist in the Army Air Corps. They gave me a card that said I was a cadet, but they didn’t call me out. I got so tired waiting I tried to join the army, but because of the card they said I belonged to the Army Air Corps which was the predecessor to today’s Air Force.
“Finally they called me out. J. C. and I were called out together. After nine months of school to teach me to be a pilot, I flew 40 missions.” (click here to see his combat missions).
“J. C. was drafted into B24’s like me,” Stine said.
“It was funny in a way. When the colonel was giving me a check ride to show that I had passed the test I carried a pillow with me. He asked me, ‘What do you have a pillow for?’ I told him, ‘I need it to reach the bottom rudder.’ Then he decided I needed to be measured again to make sure I was 5’8”—regulation height. I was. I guess I just had shorter legs.
“I went back to San Antonio because I wanted to fly B26’s. I liked the B26’s better. I felt like I was driving an airplane instead of a truck. My missions took me on the European front. I flew out of Corsica, Italy. I bombed the mountain passes to prevent materials getting to Italy from Germany.
“Then I moved into France—east of Paris, and I flew into Germany. We bombed bridges, railways and ammo depots. When we approached a bridge we flew low down the river and the Germans would set their guns up on the bridge so flak would come right at us. The war ended right after my 40 missions. So they sent me to Belgium, and I was there for a few months before coming back to the United States,” Stine said.
“It seems like I was always lucky in life. I can remember early in my deployment, we were on a bombing mission and I was flying in the right seat, (co-pilot). We had already gone through briefing and our plane was about to taxi when a jeep comes up and a guy gets out and says, ‘Stine, I need you to fly left seat (pilot) on another plane.’ That plane’s pilot got sick after the briefing. I don’t need to tell you this was going to be a tough mission. Anyway, the plane I had been in got shot down and all were lost. When I got back to the dining hall I was eating and I heard my tent buddies arguing over who was going to get my air mattress. When I turned around you would have thought they saw a ghost,” Stine says laughing. NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw would later coin the term “The Greatest Generation” for these brave young men.
ENTREPRENEUR AND BUSINESSMAN
Stine opened a construction company in Sulphur with his best friend J.C. Carlin after World War II. They both had sent back money to Dee Dee’s dad, Jake Drost, who was instructed to buy up some land for the two of them to start land development and a construction company. That land is known as Starlin Heights today, a name derived from Stine and Carlin.
“After the war, J.C. and I started the lumber company to supply our construction company and we called it Starlin Lumber. One day he said one of us needed to buy the other out. I said I’d buy him out. It could have been either way. He moved up to Alexandria, and he still comes down to visit once a month. I kept the original name but by 1973, four of my boys, Gary, Jay, Dennis and David, had joined the business, and of course there were no Starlin’s around, since it was a name we made up, we decided to change it to Stine Lumber. Later the youngest, Tim, joined the company as our accountant and my oldest son, Dick, joined after he got out of the active duty in the Air Force. He was also a pilot serving in Vietnam and later became a Colonel in the Air Force Reserve.
“That made all six boys in the business leaving, only my daughter, Janie, not in the business. I felt sorry for Dee Dee, I had all my boys working with me and our only daughter lived away. Janie is an accomplished sculptor, with many of her works in the area. She’s done work for country singer Vince Gill, famed heart surgeon Dr. Michael DeBakey and many others. Dennis and Tim went on to serve in the Louisiana Legislature and Dennis became the Commissioner of Administration under Governor Buddy Roemer. You can tell I’m proud of my kids.”
Stine Lumber Company has been in Sulphur for over fifty years. They now have 11 locations throughout Louisiana and one in Natchez, Mississippi. “Concerning the business I’m never saying ‘finished.’ We employ between 700 to 800 employees and we consider all of them family.”
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Dick Stine:
Growing up, Dad always believed in taking a family vacation at least two weeks out of the summer. So on our long summer road trips, Dad would make sure everyone was cool. Back in the 1950’s, cars with A/C would only be in the front. Dad came up with a solution to that problem. He would take a 4” dryer vent hose and tape it up around one of the front vents and run the hose over the station wagon seats to the back of the car. Dad wasn’t much of an engineer but we were very pleased with this solution as it kept all of the kids in the back seat nice and cool.
In those days, only a few of the motel’s had swimming pools. We would always drive around the town we were in until we found one with a swimming pool. All seven kids and Dad would be in the pool within 10 minutes after check in. Dad would play with all of us. He could stay under water it seemed like forever and would ride each of us on his back. We would stay in the pool for a couple of hours each time and Dad was always there with us.
We knew he had great fun with this and more importantly for my parents, it would wear us out.
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Gary Stine:
When I was very young, before Villa Maria subdivision was developed in Sulphur, I remember Dad and I parking along Cypress Street across from where the Sulphur Post Office sits today. We crossed an old barbed wire fence and walked through the woods for a long way and then across a field and we came upon some beautiful old live oak trees. We had brought a picnic lunch with us and we sat under the oak trees and ate our lunch. Dad told me that someday he was going to build our house under those trees.
As I was sitting with dad just this morning in his sunroom under those same oak trees in almost the same spot where we had our picnic many years ago, he was telling me about how he built our house in the early sixties and had added the sunroom on later. I told him about my memory of us coming out to that very spot and he said he remembered us having a picnic. At 93 years young, it’s amazing to see not only how great his memory still is, but how dad came through on his dream to build his wife and family a nice home we still enjoy today. And the oak trees are more beautiful than ever.
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Janie Stine Lacroix:
Daddy loved taking us on long road trips. I’m talking all sevenof us in a station wagon. He and Mom would plan summer trips to the mountains. He would drive so many hours during the night that we would awake in a new state and marvel at the unusual terrain. Dad’s rewards were our shouts and squeals as he drove around the scary cliffs of the Rockies, en route to even more exciting destinations. He made sure that we saw the great places that America has to offer, such places as Carlsbad Caverns, Sequoia National Forest, the Grand Canyon and Disneyland to name a few. One time my maternal grandparents accompanied us on one long trip in their own car, (try doing that without cell phones). Dad would drive until he and Mom could find a hotel/motel that had a “pool” not all of them had pools at that time. He would laugh at how fast my brothers would find their swimsuits (with the help of my mother) and compete to be the first to jump into the pool. My Daddy delighted in our fascination with the world. Our joy was his joy.We spent most of our summers at our old fishing camp in Hackberry on a shallow lake that was just perfect for us kids to swim, crab, and fish. Dad always had a boat and displayed incredible patience when he taught us all how to ski at relatively young ages. If we didn’t get up on the first try he would encourage us to keep trying. He would not give up on us. He would circle around and around for as many as six times until we would finally pop up and glide on top of the water with huge grins from ear to ear. That is the way Dad dealt with every challenge we kids met in life. And when we would finally overcome our challenges his delight in our successes seemed greater than our on. That in itself was reward enough.My daddy was always my hero. In a crowded room (which is what our family den usually was) my favorite seat was always Daddy’s lap.
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To see some of Janie’s work, please click here.

Jay Stine:
My twin brother’s (Dennis and David) and I as little boys were always getting into mischief. My Mom, to get our attention, rather than spank us would always say, “I am going to tell your Dad when he gets home if you do not behave!”
Mom would always follow through on her promises but we always deserved it. After working a full day’s work, Dad was never in the mood to spank us but of course he would follow through when Mom asked. Occasionally, knowing we were going to get a spanking, we would take a book and put it under our pajamas. Of course, Dad could see the protrusion, but he would never let us know and would make a noise like he hurt his hand. We all got a good laugh out of it.
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Dennis Stine:
Growing up we were blessed to have a vacation spot the entire family looked forward to going to. Now, it wasn’t much, mind you, but it was a heavenly place for my brothers and my sister.
We had a camp at Joe Dugas Landing in Hackberry, LA. My dad moved a small barber shop on the property and added on to it to give us a screen porch and large room where all seven kids slept. No air conditioner, just fans, but we didn’t care, we were on the water.
We swam in the muddy water of Big Lake watching the large ships go by before a levee was built on the west side of the channel. Dad had a wooden boat with a 35 horsepower Johnson outboard that he parked in a community wharf that housed about 30 other boats.
We would water ski all day and Dad was the one who pulled us back and forth until the sun set. Numerous times he would plow into the community wharf when the outboard reverse would not catch. It seems Dad thought he was flying his B26 in battle. He used to tell us, “you can come into a wharf as fast as you like, all you have to do is ‘reverse thrust’.” This Air Corp term for brakes did not always work.
Mom’s and Dad’s of other families would get their kids off the wharf when Dad was captain of his boat, no one was safe!
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David Stine: As young boys, Dad would sit all six boys up on barstools on our back patio. To save money he would cut our hair with electric barber clippers. The style back then was to cut your hair real close to the scalp like a crew cut. In the 1950s the raccoon tail hat was popular due to the influence of Davy Crockett. So Dad, ever being the jokester, would cut our hair in the crew cut style but would always leave a long “raccoon” tail for one of the boys. You never wanted to be the one with the unfortunate tail because you were easily mocked. After enough embarrassment, Dad would eventually come back around and cut off the tail. We had a lot of fun with that.

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Tim Stine:
Dad used to take us down this old shell road south of Sulphur to teach us all how to drive. Back then, you had to learn how to drive with a standard shift so all seven of us learned how to drive in his old beat up truck.
When I was 25 I was injured in a diving accident on July 4, 1981. I tell people, “that’s our country’s Independence Day and my Dependence Day.” It was a C6 complete spinal injury, so I’m a quadriplegic. My fingers are paralyzed. The only thing I can do with my wrist is cock it back and cock it forward. I’m in a motorized chair.
I’ll never forget the day my father rigged a van so I could drive again. One day I was sitting there and my dad came over and he said “Try it.” And I started doing it. At the time it was so hard for the muscles. Slowly he’d ride with me and I built those muscles up to where he’d not ride with me but be following me. That completely changed my life.
He quit working at the lumber business altogether the day the accident happened. He stayed in a hotel in Houston for over six months while I was in the hospital. Initially, doctors told him I wouldn’t make it. But he believed in me and stayed involved in my rehabilitation process every single day. I know I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for him being by my side every step of the way.

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Daddy’s Girl!

To my Dad (Jay Stine)- The greatest man I’ve ever known…

I love you so much. You’ve dedicated your life to being the best Dad and you’ve never let the 6 of us down….you are without a doubt the glue that holds us together. You’ve worked so hard to support our family and give us a loving home. Over the years you never complained for all the personal sacrifices you made to help us get ahead in life.

My most fondest memories are spending time just you and I at the camp…or going on walks…to playing shuffle-board with you on a cruise ship! For anyone who knows me, they know it’s an understatement that I’m such a “Daddy’s girl”. You can possibly do no wrong in my eyes and all that I’ve ever wanted is to make you proud. I dont know if you know just exactly how much you mean to me and how much I look up to you. You are without a doubt and without equal the greatest man I’ve ever known. You’re the constant in my life….MY HERO….no one could ever possibly compare to you Daddy.

Happy Fathers Day

-Love, Your baby girl

Karli

Happy Fathers Day, Dad!!

My father is Jay and just like my Grandfather, they both love to play tennis. Due to his love for tennis, I knew that this was a sport I wanted to learn how to play because it would mean having more quality time with my father. I’m the 5th of 6 kids so any individual time was always appreciated. With my Dad as my coach he practiced with me after long days of work or even after playing a tennis match himself. I’ve always strived to making him proud in everything I do.

Thanks Dad for always being there and cheering me along the way. You have taught me many things in life and I value all the moments and memories we have made in the past and look forward to many more in the future.

Happy Fathers Day, Daddy!! I love you.

-Katie Stine

My Daddy, The Jokester.

Being the daughter of Tim Stine has its advantages and disadvantages. However, there are many more advantages. As a member of the Stine dynasty, I was raised with the belief that faith, family, and laughter are among the most important things in life. My dad takes the third very seriously.

If you know my dad, you know that he is one of the funniest people you will ever meet.. and sort of a jokester too. If you didn’t know my dad and heard the way he always makes fun of me, you’d think he hated me. However, Dad says, “Alice, I make fun of you because i LOVE YOU.” …I’m still not completely sold. When you’re around my dad, there is never a dull moment, and throughout the years, I often meet people who know him. Every person I meet always tells me how lucky I am to have such a funny guy as my dad. And I couldn’t agree more.

The best memories are the ones when my dad, my brother Jake, my sister Amy, and I all get together. The stories we tell and the fools we make out of ourselves are priceless memories that will stay with me forever.

Happy Fathers Day, Daddy. I love you. -Your Favorite, Alice.

daddy

my dads name is gerald he is a great dad we went threw a divorce i was having a hard time and my dad picked me up and got me on my feet again I’m only 12 years old and my dad bends over backwards for me and i love to give him what he wants for fathers day and trust me he keeps talking about the yeti ice chest thanks stine

My Daddy The Hero

My Daddy was born in 1899 & was 1 of 7 children.He never gained worldy fame but he was a great Daddy. He was a farmer in the summer & trapped for Mink & raccoon & cut and hauled fire wood in the winter to make a living for 7 childern. He also had time for his childern & was a loving Father. He died in 1974 at the age of 74. He is greatly missed by all.His name was E.E.(Zeke) Ford from Catahoula Parish. He has gone on to be with the lord.

Daniel Ford

My Hero William Wright

Thank you for being super daddy.You would go see movies with me.Sometimes you would bring me to go get ice cream.You would help me fish. Thank you daddy.

-Shelby Wright, 7 years old

My Hero Clyde Alexander

I have so many good memories of my daddy, I cherish them in my heart. All my life I believed my dad could do anything, because he usually could. He fixed everything around the house, worked on the cars, mixed and poured concrete at every home we lived in from Morgan City to Port Elizabeth, South Africa. He was always busy building something. He taught us kids to be honest, responsible, and grateful. He and my mom always put us first, if they were planning a vacation it was around what us kids would like, they never took “just the two of them” trips, we were a family. We had a great life with lots of love. I miss both of parents dearly but I know they are together in heaven.

Christa Alexander Wright