Judd Bearb of Overland Park, Kansas, formerly of New Iberia, was driving at mid-morning Saturday on Main Street when he had to stop for a parade winding from Paul’s Flower and Plant Shop on Weeks Street to the heart of downtown New Iberia.

The 47-year-old former Eagle Scout was in town to visit his mother, Jane Bearb, and was about to go pick up his wife, Tracy Daily Bearb, and son, Jayden, 11, in Jennings. However, girls and boys in the parade wearing Girl Scout and Boy Scout uniforms piqued his interest and he followed the parade to Bouligny Plaza.

“I was like the second car from everybody stopped. They (marchers) were going to the plaza. There was a microphone at the gazebo. I pulled in and there it was,” Bearb said later Saturday.

“It” was a ceremony to honor his old Troop 133 Scoutmaster, Paul Schwing of New Iberia. Bearb had no idea it was happening before he got in his car for that trip to Jennings.

Fate? Coincidence? Divine intervention? Bearb, who achieved the Eagle Scout rank in 1983 as the 85th Eagle Scout under Schwing, will accept either of the above.

He said, almost reverently, “It kinda almost choked me up a little bit. I thought, ‘Wow. How neat is this?’ you know?”

Bearb, who was born and raised in New Iberia, saw Pat Castille of New Iberia, one of the organizers, at the event. Castille told him all about the grand effort to salute the legendary Scoutmaster and “Mayor of Main Street.”

Castille said, “It’s just the most amazing thing. He’s driving down Main Street and sees the parade. How amazing is that? He said, “I know if it’s a Boy Scout event, Mr. Schwing must be there. He (Bearb) was in the troop right behind me. We had a great visit.”

After the ceremony, which included remarks from master of ceremony Dr. George Cousin of New Iberia, another of Schwing’s Eagle Scouts, and words from the man himself, Schwing, Bearb made a point to meet his former Scoutmaster.

“I hadn’t seen Mr. Paul in about 25 years. I asked Mr. Paul, ‘Do you remember me?’ He said, ‘Hey, Judd!’ and then he goes, ‘I talk to your mom all the time,’ ” he said.

“It was awesome. It was nice. I wish there would have been more Scouts there. It was a pretty tight-knit group as I was coming through there.”

Bearb said he drove here alone from Overland Park to New Iberia to see his mother on Jan. 27. His wife and son flew down Monday to attend her uncle’s funeral in Texas, he said.

Bearb owns a landscaping business. After graduating from Grayson County College in Sherman, Texas, he moved to the Kansas City, Missouri, area in the mid-1990s, where he was the golf course superintendent at Loch Loyd Country Club in K.C., which hosted eight PGA tour events while he was there.

He’ll never forget his Scouting days and Schwing, he said, or the chance meeting of the parade.