Staff Spotlight – Erika Leggett Clabough
According to the Beaumont Convention Visitors Bureau, “The localist is a group of passionate residents who embody the Beaumont spirit...They are individuals who already see Beaumont as a vibrant place with untapped potential.” I am a localist, but this wasn’t always true.
Growing up in Beaumont often felt like living in the largest small town I would ever find. Beaumont is large enough to have rush hour traffic, but small enough that strangers ask if you are “kin to so-n-so.”
In Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road: The Original Scroll”, he describes traveling through our area with a vivid mysticism that so perfectly describes Southeast Texas:
We were surrounded by a great forest of viney trees in which we could almost hear the slither of a million copperheads. The only thing we could see was the red ampere button on the Hudson dashboard… We wanted to get out of this mansion of the snake. this mireful drooping dark and zoom on back to familiar American ground and cowtowns. There was a smell of oil and dead water in the air. This was a manuscript of the night we couldn’t read. An owl hooted. We took a chance on one of the dirt roads and pretty soon we were crossing the evil old Sabine river that is responsible for all these swamps. With amazement we saw great structures of light ahead of us. “Texas! It’s Texas! Beaumont oiltown!”
After graduating from West Brook High School, I eagerly sought to finally bolt away from our small town for greater adventures. I scoured the nation for any and every graphic design program in search for a vibrant art culture and an atmosphere to flourish within.
In the fall of 2012 I began studying Graphic Design at Lamar University with every intention of transferring the next year. I continued applying to art programs and touring other campuses, determined to find a community passionate about their own culture and arts.
After narrowing my search for transfer universities, and facing the imminent reality of losing a year’s worth of college credits, I decided to stay and get involved in our community. I joined art clubs on campus, worked with the University Press off and on, joined Alpha Delta Pi sorority, and started attending art openings and cultural events in our community. I connected with people, made friends, and met my future husband Cole Clabough.
I slowly opened my senses, past the smell of oil and dead water in the air to find a bewitching culture. Every weekend through college I worked as a student interpreter for the Texas Energy Museum, greeting visitors and answering questions about the exhibits and the locale. I met visitors from around the world, both ordinary folks and corporate CEOs, eager to experience Beaumont – my hometown. They would comment on our unique landscape, crawfish season, Zydeco music, tex-mex cuisine, the insufferable heat and humidity, and abundance of industry. They saw a community buzzing with life beyond the mosquito hawks and cicadas.
It wasn’t until taking photography classes from Keith Carter, and listening to his anecdotes of Southeast Texas that I began taking pride in my roots. He encouraged us to elevate our language, and articulate our photographs into life. Keith’s words narrated our area with a delicate web of anthropological insight observed through a camera lens and cultivated from traveling the world.
In his April of 2019 interview with the Lamar University Press, Keith Carter describes Southeast Texas:
“…where I live is flat, tangled, deeply green, hurricanes roll in, you have four out of the five poisonous snakes in North America and three out of the four carnivorous plants,” he said. “You have white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. You have black imagination. You have Vietnamese industry. You have mexican mythology, crackers, peckerwoods and rednecks, all in this gumbo culture, and I thought, ‘My God, that should be my subject matter.’
As my passion for Beaumont grew, so did my desire to share our culture with others, and serve non-profit organizations that form the vibrant tapestry of Beaumont.
In the summer of 2019 I began working for First United Methodist Church Beaumont as the Director of Communications and Graphic Design. My job is to clearly communicate information and amplify the voice of our church to our current and future First UMC Family. I do this through designing materials for print and online, including the Spire newsletter, bulletins, postcards, maintaining our website, social media, and emails. I seek to create items that are a genuine and positive representation of First United Methodist Church, while serving the greater design needs of our First UMC family.
Working for First UMC showed me what it means to be the hands and feet of Christ. While watching our congregation serve week after week, I witnessed a group of passionate, Christ filled people grow food and cook to feed our hungry neighbors, build beds for kids so they could sleep off the floor, clothe our community after flood waters ravaged their homes, supply students and teachers with tools to learn, and many more blessings.
After listening to our services online, and promoting our volunteer work, I fell in love with our mission of loving the city with the heart of Christ, and chose to be baptized in January of 2020. My husband Cole Clabough and I made the decision to join First UMC Beaumont.
While COVID forever changed many things, it has not shifted our church’s desire to be a warm and welcoming community for everyone, and to amplify our mission with the greater Beaumont area.
My hope for our church is that we can all be localists. We can be the hands and feet actively showing everyone the love of Christ. We can be vocal and proud for the future of Beaumont. We can be the salt and light. I challenge you to become a localist – to participate in community events and share our local opportunities with people who haven’t met First UMC. Lets work towards creating a unified Beaumont and inspire others to do the same by loving this city with the heart of Christ.
Salt and Light
13 “Let me tell you why you are here. You’re here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of this earth. If you lose your saltiness, how will people taste godliness? You’ve lost your usefulness and will end up in the garbage.
14-16 “Here’s another way to put it: You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We’re going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. If I make you light-bearers, you don’t think I’m going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I’m putting you on a light stand. Now that I’ve put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand—shine! Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you’ll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven.
Matthew 5:13-16,
The Message
© original watercolor, Erika Leggett Clabough