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BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Funeral services are scheduled next week for East Baton Rouge Parish School Board member Randy Lamana, who collapsed as he walked to his car at the Capitol after a legislative hearing on restructuring the school system.
Lamana collapsed late Wednesday and was pronounced dead at 11:51 p.m. He was 57.
The Advocate reports (http://bit.ly/1gH7Jce ) Lamana won a special board election in 2007 and was re-elected in 2010. He was planning to run for a second full-term in the Nov. 4 election.
A wake is scheduled Monday at from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Rabenhorst Funeral Home in Baton Rouge. Services will be held there Tuesday at 11 a.m.
In lieu of flowers, the family is asking people to donate new East Baton Rouge Parish school uniforms for needy children.
Brandi Conrad, Lamana's eldest daughter, thanked several School Board members who stayed with her father until he was transported to Baton Rouge General Medical Center. "They stayed with him until the end," she said.
Conrad said he died from an apparent heart attack but the official cause of death won't be clear for a couple of days.
"Mr. Lamana passed away in the service of this district, advocating on behalf of the children of this district," Superintendent Bernard Taylor said. "I'm sure he was doing what he wanted to be doing."
Taylor said he didn't see Lamana's collapse but arrived soon after and waited for paramedics who transported him to the hospital. "It was terrible," Taylor said. "Just terrible."
Carnell Washington, president of the East Baton Rouge Federation of Teachers, said Lamana told him Wednesday that he had just been to the hospital for heart issues and he knew Lamana suffered from diabetes.
Washington said Lamana spent all day at the Capitol and was worried about the school restructuring legislation as well as companion bills that would reduce the School Board from 11 to seven members.
"Worried is an understatement," Washington said.
Still, Lamana invited him to an annual fish fry he was planning for Friday and seemed excited about it, Washington said.
Lamana lived near Pride, and his wife, Tammy, is the longtime school secretary at Northeast Elementary School in Pride. They had three children.
"He was an excellent father, a loving husband," Conrad said. "He worked really hard for the kids in EBR."
Lamana, a 1974 graduate of Baton Rouge High School, had long worked selling meat to grocery stores. He was a volunteer at Northeast schools before running successfully for the School Board.
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Information from: The Advocate, http://theadvocate.com
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