• Families meet in Addis on discovery mission 
• Four families reunite, trace heritage from Canada to Louisiana 
• Acadia CD-ROM can take Cajuns on armchair trip 
      to ancestral home 
• Music sets Cajuns apart
• Acadian clans close local Congrès '99 
• Duhons have their day 
• Breauxs together again
• Hébert Reunion Omelet
• Doucet family revels in reunion
• Savoie-Savoy forge ties at reunion
• State park interprets history of Acadians, 'Evangeline'

The Hebert family reunion -- possibly more than any of the 37 others celebrating the survival of about 80 families with their culture intact after the British scattered them to the winds of the Atlantic with expulsions beginning in 1755 -- was planned as a display of pageantry.

The highlight of this display was the cooking of a 5,000-egg omelet with the cooperation of the ''Knights'' of the ''Giant Omelet Celebration.''

The Knights wear three-foot-high chef's hats and carry copper skillets around their necks as medallions.

This festivity is usually held in the cooler month of November.

It was changed this year, however, because of the celebration.

Since 1884, celebrations of Acadian (or ''Cajun,'' in Louisiana) culture have been held in August --
principally in Canada -- because the feast of Our Lady of the Assumption, the Acadian patron saint
identified with the North Star, is on Aug. 15. On that day, the CMA will stage a musical gala, ''le Cry du
Bayou,'' in the Cajundome in Lafayette.

Family members worried that their northern cousins would suffer in the heat of a Louisiana August.

Still, under the gentle spur of Russell Gaspard, president of ''la Famille HŽbert,'' the giant omelet
celebration hierarchy agreed to cooperate with their procession around Abbeville's Magdalene Square, the
lighting of a wood fire in the middle of the city's historic district and the cooking of a giant omelet.

For the procession, the color-guard members carried the flags of Louisiana, Acadiana and the United
States. They also carried the banner of Abbeville -- the Vermilion Parish seat and, as deemed by the last
U.S. Census, the most Cajun place in the nation, based on the numbers of descendants of Acadian
refugees and speakers of French.

Some foreign visitors were upset that the international Acadian flag was not carried. That flag is a French
tricolor with a yellow star in the blue field representing Our Lady of the Assumption. The flag was adopted
by Acadians in 1884 to keep alive in the schoolchildren of France the identity of being Acadian.

One woman from New Brunswick, Canada, held a foot-square International Acadian Flag across the
barrier between her and the giant omelet skillet.

''This belongs there. This belongs there,'' she said. ''I have a flag of Acadiana in my home.''

A group of Belgians draped a full-sized international Acadian flag over the barrier.

Some of the color bearers nearby glanced toward the foreigners' display.

Gaspard, asked to comment on the matter, said in a voice mail that the international Acadian flag had flown over a gazebo in Magdalene Square for three days and ''if we offended'' the visitors, ''we're sorry.'' He said officials of the Giant Omelet Celebration were acting on their own at the request of the Hebert family reunion organization.

Officials of the Giant Omelet Celebration could not be reached for comment late Saturday. They were
attending a Mass in French in St. Mary Magdalene Church and the closing ceremonies, which included a
talk by CMA Director Brian Gabriel Comeaux.