For André Moreau, it's not necessarily the story that makes it memorable, but the people involved in that story.
Over his 40 years in television news, the longtime Baton Rouge anchor has connected with countless story subjects — listening to them, reporting about them and hoping to "not leave anything out," as he puts it.
He's covered earthquakes and hurricanes, Presidents and a Pope.
After a career spent largely in the capital city, save for a 14-year gap which included stints in Columbus, Ohio; Detroit, Los Angeles and San Diego, Moreau is retiring. Before his final broadcast — Friday night's "Louisiana: The State We're In" on Louisiana Public Broadcasting — he took time to recount past highlights and speculate on what his future picture might look like.
Those unforgettable story subjects
Although he's covered Presidents and a Pope, it's Louisiana's people, Moreau said, whose stories he always remembers.
On July 20, 2012, James Holmes, 24, carrying multiple firearms, is accused of shooting into the audience at an Aurora, Colorado movie theater; 12 people were killed and 70 others injured, including Bonnie Kate Pourciau, a teen from Baton Rouge whose leg was shattered.
In those first weeks and months after the shooting, Moreau reported on Pourciau for WAFB, Channel 9, where he was a co-anchor from 2008 to 2016. Ten years later, he checked in on Pourciau (now Zoghbi, she married Max Zoghbi in 2014) for an LPB segment.
"She still uses crutches. It's her knee. She's in pain every day," Moreau said.
She's also optimistic. Her Instagram bio reads: "Choosing joy in chronic pain, seeking beauty in brokenness."
Moreau shares that optimism for life in general.
"Things happen to everyone. You get knocked down and often don't really feel like getting up but you have to, " he said. "Keep moving, have faith and believe in yourself."
Also etched in Moreau's memory: the residents he met following Hurricane Laura's devastation in Lake Charles in 2020 and in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida in Grand Isle in 2021.
Just this month, Moreau returned to Lake Charles for an update.
"We've stayed with them ever since then because they were kind of forgotten. Grand Isle wasn't forgotten, but Grand Isle is such that it will always be in such difficulty just because of where they are (in southernmost Louisiana on a narrow barrier island in the Gulf of Mexico)."
"They're in a much better place now," Moreau said of Lake Charles, located in the state's southwest section. "I've touched base with Mayor Nic Hunter several times, because my thought is … that the news we give is truly important to everybody in our state, if it pertains to our state.
"You might have, you know, the cops and robbers and the gunshots and the shooting and all this stuff," he continued. "We (LPB) don't cover the minutiae of that, but the big picture of why it's happening, we're definitely going to cover that."
A year after Ida, Moreau's return to Grand Isle for a follow-up story took a very personal turn.
"We had a big family house, owned by my oldest sister and her husband, in Grand Isle. It wasn't quite up to code after Katrina because it was built in the '60s,'70s, essentially. I'd been going there since the age of 18," Moreau said, pointing to a pre-hurricane photo of the elevated wooden structure on his phone.
"We took people (viewers) to the location that I believed to be where the camp was. There was nothing left except some of the pilings. No stove, no refrigerator, no furniture, clothes probably in the bay."
From model to newsman: the backstory
The youngest of 10 siblings in a Baton Rouge family with deep Louisiana roots, Moreau attended University Laboratory School and LSU, where he majored in advertising. After having done some modeling for local department stores, Moreau chose to spend his last semester as an LSU student in New York, taking correspondence courses and working for a modeling agency.
"It was really a commercial agency. I thought, 'Oh, that could be high fashion.' And so I did a few things, not that much. But by the end of the summer I was ready to come back here, and I walked through graduation."
His first job post-LSU was helping his then brother-in-law start a hunting and fishing publication, a 16-page tabloid which wound up being the highly successful Louisiana Sportsman. After nine months, Moreau, a huge LSU fan, was hired by Tulane University's fundraising arm to direct national field research responsible for cultivating and identifying major gift donors. When the deepest pockets pointed to California, Tulane saw the need to open a satellite fundraising office there and wanted Moreau to run it. That, however, didn't happen.
About a month before he was scheduled to move into an apartment in the Golden State's Marina del Ray, a call from KALB, Channel 5 in Alexandria redirected Moreau's career to television broadcasting.
Testing the sportscasting waters, Moreau had sent out audition tapes, and KALB expressed interest in him.
"As I look back, I'm thinking, you are insane to have done that. But that's what I did," he recalled.
After just 80 days in Alexandria, Lafayette station KATC, Channel 3 scooped him up. Then it was on to WAFB, where he was a sportscaster until 1994. His out-of-state career years followed until 2008. Three months into his time at NBC4 in Ohio, he made the switch from sports to news. In 2008, with WAFB's George Sells retiring, Moreau returned to his hometown CBS affiliate to co-anchor the 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. newscasts alongside Donna Britt. In 2017, he moved to an anchor chair across town at LPB.
Last month, the Louisiana Association of Broadcasters honored Moreau for his 40-year career with a Lifetime Achievement Award during its 2023 Prestige Awards ceremony.
Retirement, minus the couch
Moreau, a lifelong health and fitness enthusiast who belies his 65 years, sees giving up the 40-hour-a-week grind as an avenue to doing more.
Among his passion projects are:
- Joni & Friends, a worldwide faith-based organization to assist those affected by disabilities through programs and outreach, including summer camps for the disabled and their caregivers. The group hosts its first Louisiana camp in June.
- The Renand Foundation, another nonprofit which rescues Haitian children mistakenly sold into that country's child sex slavery trade. Its work also branches into building schools and additional assistance.
- The global nonprofit catchthecatfish.com, which he began working with after discovering online fraud involving his own images, fitness videos and resume. Producing a streaming service documentary on the subject also is a possibility, he said.
- And his latest cause, helping to ignite interest in an LED lighting project for the downtown Mississippi River Bridge to attract more residents and tourists alike to the city. Shreveport has already done this.
Presenting TED talks, more and extended travel, Moreau's bucket list goes on.
"Even if I did nothing and sat at home, I'd be all right. But I'd be bored stiff," he said with a grin.