06/20/2026
One hundred and ten years ago, Robert Frey proudly represented the Loranger community as the first and only graduate of the newly established "Loranger Agricultural School".
While Robert's achievement is noteworthy, the story behind his Alma Mater's beginning tells us even more about the community he called home.
When the Loranger Brothers began developing the community in the early 1900s, their vision extended far beyond simply creating a new town. They promoted Loranger as "The Coming Town," attracting prospective settlers with the promise of fertile farmland, opportunity, and a better future. Their plans included a model farm, a post office, a commissary, and, notably, a modern schoolhouse built at their own expense.
Agriculture was at the center of everything. The model farm demonstrated the productivity of the local soil, while the school prepared young people to become the next generation of farmers, business owners, and community leaders. To the founders of Loranger, education and agriculture were not separate ideas; they were two parts of the same vision.
That vision continued with the establishment of the Loranger Agricultural School, the second of its kind in Tangipahoa Parish, just behind the Chesbrough Agricultural School.
In January 1915, newspapers reported that the Tangipahoa Parish School Board had visited Loranger to discuss the establishment of an agricultural school. For the community's leaders, it was another step toward realizing their vision of "The Coming Town." Just a year and a half later, that vision became reality. On June 4, 1916, The Times-Picayune announced that Robert Frey had graduated from the Loranger Agricultural School, becoming the school's very first graduate of its Class of 1916.
Across the country, educators and policymakers were promoting agricultural schools as a way to combine traditional academics with practical instruction in farming, livestock, and the sciences. The movement became so influential that it ultimately led to the passage of the Smith-Hughes Act of 1917, which provided federal support for vocational agricultural education in schools throughout the United States.
Years before vocational agriculture became national policy, the people of Loranger had already embraced the idea. They understood that the future of their community depended upon educating young people who could both preserve and improve the agricultural way of life that had drawn families to this corner of Tangipahoa Parish.
Though Robert Frey stood alone as the school's only graduate in 1916, his diploma symbolized something much larger: a community investing in its future through education.
Today, more than a century later, that same commitment remains part of Loranger's identity. The fields may have changed, and the town may have grown beyond what its founders imagined, but the belief that education strengthens a community continues to connect us to those earliest days.
