Meet the real George O'Neal
A member of LSU's '58 title team, the developer paved the way for St. George to become a city.
St. George just hung a brand new street sign over a road named for a genuine Baton Rouge original, and somehow got his name wrong. The shiny white sign reads "George O'Neil." The blue city-parish sign underneath it, still hanging until St. George gets around to taking it down, has always spelled it correctly: O'Neal.
Why it matters: Whoever George O'Neal was, he deserves better than a typo on his own street, especially from a city that owes more to guys like him than it probably realizes.
The résumé: George Marvin O'Neal Jr. has a pretty impressive set of credentials.
- Three-sport star at University Lab School (football, basketball, baseball).
- Navy veteran (1955-57).
- Reserve center on LSU's 1958 national championship football team.
- Successful residential and commercial developer, especially in southeast East Baton Rouge.
- Partner in two daiquiri shops. (Of course, this is Louisiana.)
- Operated a prison ministry at Angola through his church.
The paperwork: None of that got the road named after him.
- O'Neal developed rural land in the southeastern part of the parish in the 1970s and '80s.
- Putting his own name on the connector street cutting through his subdivisions was just how the permit paperwork got filled out back then—no ceremony required.
The connection: Those subdivisions and dozens like them fed the suburban sprawl that gave St. George the population, the sales tax base and the case to become a city decades later.
The bottom line: St. George exists partly because of guys like O'Neal. Spelling his name right on a sign is the least it can do.
Note: RedEye wanted to know how the mistake happened and what was being done to correct it, but an email sent Friday morning to Landon Tims, the St. George public works director, was not answered by the time this story was published.
