Thursday, January 30, from 9 a.m. to noon, Guy Gérard, mayor of the commune from 1980 to 2008, will dedicate the book published by Pays Histoire et Patrioines, “École et la République”, on his life as a teacher, an activist and first magistrate.
Can you summarize your public career?
Arrived as director of the primary school of Monsempron in 1966, I quickly took the head of the Amicale laïque. In 1971, Mayor Kléber Thoueilles offered me a place on his municipal list. Nine years later, in 1980, following his death, two assistants and an elected official who refused the position and a candidate having been refuted by the running mate, my name was proposed and I was elected. I was thus again for four terms and I returned the apron in 2008.
Why this book, sixteen years later?
I was asked, and pushed, by friends. In particular Olivier Poitrenaud, a pruniculturalist installed in Saint-Vite, very involved in the Liberty cinema and in history and heritage country. He often asked me about my life as a mayor and one day said to me: “Write it”. I refused and he offered to do it in the form of an interview.
What is the book on?
I very simply tell my thirty-seven years in mandate and the problems of a small town on a daily basis: adults, but also beautiful meetings and good times.
-What subjects have particularly caught your attention?
The industrial situation of the town and the smoky basin was the main subject of concern for all my mandates. Disindustrialisation, with 400 jobs removed from brickyard – resulting in a 75 % drop in professional tax income – arrived while we are launching very important work, such as the construction of the college, the restoration of the priory to transform it into a place cultural, the Michel-Delrieu center and the initiation basin.
You also tell the origins of your commitment …
My commitment is linked to my story. It was first of all a family of railway workers, at the end of the war, which surely predestined me to be attentive to the living conditions of people. The chance to have entered the normal school of teachers then allowed me to understand the challenges of the secular school in the Republic. It also pushed me in my life as mayor to do everything to promote education and access to culture, which have always been the engines of my decisions.
How can we summarize the book?
These are not memories, nor a book of regrets [la fin de son mandat et sa succession manquée restent toutefois comme une cicatrice ouverte, NDLR]nor any settling of accounts. These are simply memories; An testimony which, I hope, will allow young people to know this pivotal period of Fumélois and to better understand the living area in which they live. He also wants to testify that the power we lend to elected officials is derisory compared to that of money.
