Stephen Andrew Webre, 75, died at his home in Ruston on September 12, 2022, after a courageous battle with cancer.
Dr. Webre was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the son of Andrew S. Webre and Jayne Ellis Farrar Webre. He attended the University of Southwestern Louisiana (now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette) earning a BA in History.
After serving in the United States Navy at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in the Panama Canal Zone during the Vietnam War, he attended Tulane University in New Orleans, earning a master’s degree in history and a doctorate in Latin American history. . He was Curator of Hispanic Manuscripts at the Louisiana State Museum in New Orleans from 198082. He was Professor of History at Louisiana Tech University from 1982 until his retirement as Professor Emeritus in 2017.
During that time he served variously as Head of the Department of History, Director of Graduate Studies in History, Associate Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, and held the McGinty Chair in History. He served as advisor to Phi Alpha Theta, the History Honor Society for many years. Under his leadership, the Lambda Rho Chapter at Louisiana Tech won 30 awards and national “best chapter” honors 28 times. Steve loved trains and traveling and was a talented artist.
He was also a strong supporter of study abroad programs, organizing several for Tulane and other universities, and while at Tech participated in the History Department’s Florence, Italy program and the Spanish language program in Costa Rica . Working with students gave him the greatest satisfaction. Those he taught numbered in the thousands, and he often said, “I hope they know that I have cared for each and every one of them.”
Dr. Webre was a member of the Louisiana Historical Society and the Southwestern Historical Society, serving as past president for both. He was also a member of the American Historical Association, the Conference on Latin American History, the Latin American Studies Association, and the Association for Historians of American Foreign Relations. He was awarded a lifetime membership in the Guatemalan Academy of Geography and History in recognition of his contributions to the field of Guatemalan history. He helped found the region-wide Congress of Historiadores Centroamericanos.
Dear to his heart he was helping to establish CIRMA (Centro de Investigaciones Regionales de Mesoamerica) in Antigua, Guatemala, providing access to all Guatemalans and Central Americans to historical and photographic archives and a library pertaining to the Mesoamerican region. It is one of the programs supported by the Maya Educational Foundation. He was a contributing editor on Central American history to the Handbook of Latin American Studies for the Library of Congress; on the editorial board of Mesoamérica; an editor for El Noticiero Centroamericanista; and most recently editor-in-chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Latin American History. He was inducted as a life member of the Louisiana Historical Society and was a recipient of the Louisiana Tech University Foundation Professorship Award.
He also received the Louisiana Humanities Individual Achievement Award for his work with the Readings in Literature and Culture, or RELIC, programs held in public libraries throughout north Louisiana. Community service was very important to Steve. He was a down-to-earth, gentle soul with a dry mind. He got along well with everyone and was loved by all who knew him.
Steve saw research not only as an obligation, but as a personal passion. It was what she did. He published numerous journal articles, book chapters and reviews, and made many conference presentations. His first book, José Napoleon Duarte and the Christian Democratic Party in Salvadoran Politics 1960-1972, was published in 1979. He also published two major book collections of original studies on Guatemala, featuring chapters by promising young historians, the work of whom it might not otherwise be known.
He was working on another volume of essays at the time of his death, as well as several articles. Most of this work is published in Spanish. In his own words, “It reflects my sense of the debt I owe to the people whose countries I write about.” Seventeenth-century Guatemala was his particular area of interest and the focus of most of his research. A friend once said that he wrote in the most beautiful seventeenth-century Spanish he had ever seen. He loved Guatemala and its people.
He was preceded in death by his parents; and father-in-law, James Malone.
He is survived and mourned by his wife of 37 years, Karen Malone Webre; brother, Hal Webre (Laurie) of Pensacola, Florida; nephew, Andy Webre (Robyn) of Austin, Texas; great granddaughters, Clary and Sadie Webre of Austin, Texas; mother-in-law, Betty Malone; brother-in-law, JD Malone (Jennifer) of Monroe; sister-in-law, Laura Malone of Monroe; nephew, Logan Malone of Columbia, Maryland; nephew, Gannon Malone of Monroe; and numerous cousins and friends.
He was raised Roman Catholic and was a member of the Trinity United Methodist Church branch. We could not have made this journey without the support and care of our church, our friends and our family.
The family would like to thank Dr. Will Sanders, Dr. David Osafo and the Department of Chemotherapy, Dr. Michael Nammour, Josh Stanley, OT and their entire staff at the Green Clinic; Dr. William Zollinger and staff at the NELA Cancer Center at Glenwood Medical Center in West Monroe; the doctors and staff at Bienville Medical Center in Arcadia; Phillip Carroll, PT; Cody Rhodes and staff at Danni Jones, PT; Loyalty Hospice; and Dr. Jaime Cisneros and the staff at NLMC for their support and care.
A memorial service will be held on Wednesday, October 12, 2022, at 2:00 PM in the Burkhalter Chapel at Trinity United Methodist Church in Ruston, with the Rev. Doug de Graffenreid.
Visitation and reception will follow the service in the foyer outside the church following the service. Ashes will be privately interred at Forest Lawn Cemetery under the direction of Owens Memorial Chapel Funeral Home.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests that memorials be made to the music program at Trinity UMC (1000 Woodward Ave., Ruston, LA 71270) or to the Maya Educational Foundation ( mayaedufound. org).
