Published April 12, 2026
My hometown, Lake Charles, Louisiana, has left its mark on history much more than I could have imagined when I was a child. As an adult, this eventually collided with one of my favorite restaurant habits.
First, some context for you.
Dr. Michael DeBakey, a pioneering cardiovascular surgeon, was born and raised in Lake Charles. Dolly Parton recorded her first record there. The Band made a hit record, “Up on Cripple Creek,” that mentions Lake Charles in the first verse.
Lucinda Williams wrote a song named after the city, where she was born. I met her dad, former Arkansas poet laureate Miller Williams, who began his teaching career in my hometown. He beamed when I said I was from Lake Charles, and he noted our connection in his inscription of the book I bought at his poetry reading.
My high school class took a field trip to NASA, a day trip across the Texas state line, and a wide-eyed classmate of mine on the trip was studious, science-y Sam Scimemi. Decades later I got curious and looked him up on LinkedIn and saw: Director, International Space Station Division, NASA. Well, of course.
I could drop more names. Andre Dubus. Tommy Mason. Nic Pizzolatto. Alvin Dark (whose mother’s yard I used to mow). Several pro athletes, some of whom I competed against in youth sports, some of whom I wrote about as a newspaper reporter. Garrett Nussmeier, who figures to soon be an NFL quarterback, was born in Lake Charles. The list goes on.
Fast facts
Wikipedia tells me that “Lake Charles is tied with Port Arthur, Texas, and Astoria, Oregon, as the most humid city in the contiguous United States, and the second-most humid measured location behind unincorporated Quillayute, Washington.” Sorry to tell you this, Pacific Northwest, but it’s not the humidity, it’s the heat (and the humidity).
Hundreds of decorative crossed pistols modeled after the French pirate Jean Lafitte’s guns line the railing on both sides of the Calcasieu River Bridge. McNeese State University, where Basketball Hall of Famer Joe Dumars played in college, is in Lake Charles. No doubt Michigan’s national championship has McNeese fans proudly recalling a December 2023 victory against the Wolverines.
Hurricanes Laura and Delta hammered the city in 2020, but Lake Charles is hanging in there. As you may recall, I was surprised to learn not long ago that it now has a Dutch Bros!
The food is as good as you’d expect from a city in Louisiana. Which brings me to my story about my go-to specialty po’boy.
Tony’s Pizza is a popular eatery in my hometown. At one time part of a chain, it’s long been owned by a Greek family whose members seem to know all their customers by name.
Some of the brothers called me “Pulitzer” instead. We’ll get to that.
Take a ride with me
In 2002, on a trip to Columbia, S.C., to cover a baseball series between LSU and the South Carolina Gamecocks, I drove past a Tony’s Pizza in nearby Cayce, S.C., and I thought I’d been teleported to Prien Lake Road in Lake Charles.
Honest-to-goodness true story, I never knew the Tony’s in Lake Charles (above) had a twin. On my next visit, the brothers told me the history and that those two Tony’s were the only two left.
Back to the nickname they gave me. I’d been writing for the local paper for years, with my picture next to my columns, and they started calling me by that name. “Hey, Pulitzer, what’ll you have? Meatball Special Po-Boy?”
It made me smile. Tony’s Pizza always did. Employees had names and accents I’d never seen or heard before, and there were yummy desserts and fun chocolates. I grieved two years ago when I learned that James, the cashier who knew he could talk me into adding one of the latter as he rang up my bill, had died. Everyone there felt like extended family.
It goes without saying that founding owner Charles Dickson was forever the face of Tony’s, and his loss was felt.
Anyway, I was caught by surprise when his sons started calling me “Pulitzer.” I’d never even been nominated for one, and it was certain I’d never win one. But I understood why they did it, and it was a fun part of placing my order after walking in or driving up.
It all changed one day
That’s as much thought as I gave it until April 13, 1993. That was the day we learned that Tony Kushner received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for “Angels in America: Millennium Approaches,” and Robert Olen Butler won the Pulitzer for Fiction for “A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain.”
Kushner went to high school in Lake Charles. His brother was a classmate of mine (he went on to play French horn in Vienna). There are photos of us in Revolutionary War costumes to mark a bicentennial celebration in 1976. Their father was the conductor of the Lake Charles Symphony. Their mother, who had played bassoon with the New York City Opera and other orchestras, taught me a music theory class.
Butler taught a film theory class I took at McNeese, where he taught friends of mine creative writing from 1985 to 2000. He also read my stories in the local paper.
On the day the news broke, I knew I had to say something to the brothers at Tony’s Pizza as soon as possible.
“You can’t call me that name anymore! Lake Charles has actual Pulitzer Prize winners now!”
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This year’s Pulitzer Prizes will be announced less than a month from now. May the 4th be with your favorite nominee.
Sending love. Protect your peace, and your apple pie à la mode.
Pulitzer homepage image by Gil C via Shutterstock.
Tony’s Pizza image via Google Street View.
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