Biography

Attorney Warren A. Perrin is a skills professor at Loyola Law and the University of Louisiana (UL). He was president of CODOFIL for 16 years, was awarded the French National Order of Merit, founded the Acadian Museum, and obtained a petition seeking an apology for the Acadian Deportation from Queen Elizabeth, resulting in the Royal Proclamation of 2003. Perrin was inducted into the Louisiana Justice Hall of Fame and received UL’s Outstanding Alumni Award. He has authored 12 books.

Schedule

12:45 pm to 1:30 pm
State Capitol, Senate Committee Room A
At the Intersection of Sports and Human Rights
with Warren A. Perrin and Erin Grayson Sapp

1:45 pm to 2:30 pm
Cavalier House Books Tent
Book Signing

The Weight of History, the Power of Apology: Remembering Lifter David Berger 50 Years After the Munich Olympics

Set in the turbulent 1960s and 1970s, The Weight of History, the Power of Apology focuses on three young athletes who were setting records in weightlifting at the University of Southwestern Louisiana, Tulane, and the New Orleans Athletic Club. Through its 102 pages, the book provides an interesting history of each champion's life and the unique struggles posed by their respective ethnic identities: Cajun, Jewish, and Japanese American.

Two of the weightlifters, Warren Perrin and Walter Imahara, went on to lead full and productive lives but the third, David Berger, died in the infamous massacre of 11 Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Munich Olympics-an event that was broadcast on live television to an audience of millions and is often hailed as a critical juncture in the emergence of terrorism as a feature of modern geopolitics.

While serving as a tribute to David's memory, this book also offers a meditation on how the author's character was shaped by the sport of weightlifting and how his career as a human rights advocate was inspired by David's untimely death, by Walter's experiences as a child confined in America's Japanese internment camps during World War II, and his own experience as a witness to the Jim Crow period in Louisiana.

Zachary G. Stein, head of special collections at ULL's Edith Garland Dupré Library says, "Mr. Perrin's book is haunting, perceptive, and ultimately hopeful. By weaving together the stories of three weightlifters from very different backgrounds... Mr. Perrin ingeniously shows how a simple sport such as weightlifting helped these men discover themselves in this complex world and soar higher than they could have possibly imagined."