The Toledo Bend Lake Association obviously thinks as highly of a former New Iberia outdoorsman as he thought of the TBLA.

Each December for two decades the group releases more than 20,000 Florida bass fingerlings into the lake that splits Texas and Louisiana. This December the annual stocking of baby bass will be dedicated to the memory of William “Cuz” Daugherty, who was killed in an accident May 3.

Daugherty was 66 the day he went out in his small pickup truck to ride around his property near Zwolle on the upper end of Toledo Bend. He had lived there since 2005.

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A violent thunderstorm apparently packing a small tornado moved through the area and a huge tree was uprooted. It fell and crushed the vehicle he was driving.

The tree was so large with many leafy branches that the pickup truck and his body weren’t discovered until May 15.

The outdoorsman’s death shook up the organization’s members, who met his family at the funeral May 19 in Many.

“His family told us how much the Lake Association meant to him and how he enjoyed the monthly meetings. Because the family was so impressed with what we meant to their father lost in such a tragic way, we’ll dedicate (the stocking of fish) to Cuz. It’ll mean so much to his family,” TBLA president Jack Vermeire of Zwolle said last week.

Janice LaCaze of New Iberia, Daugherty’s ex-wife, said, “At the funeral we were told they’d have one and it’d be dedicated to his memory.”

Daugherty was very active in the Toledo Bend Christian Anglers and the Toledo Bend Lake Association, she said. He got into those conservation and outdoors efforts as much as he got into duck hunting and Ducks Unlimited while he lived in the Teche Area, she said.

Vermeire agreed and said Daugherty always was the first member to arrive at every group function. The outdoorsman was genuinely dedicated to the betterment of Toledo Bend, he said.

How much he cared showed in one sentence of his obituary in The Daily Iberian, which read, “In Lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Toledo Bend Lake Association P.O. Box 1031 Many, LA, 71449 or the charity of the donor’s choice.”

“Oh, he loved the water and his fishing. He was in the process of opening up a guide service. He was fixing the camp where he could rent rooms. He was getting ready to open,” LaCaze said.

Daugherty and LaCaze, who divorced in 1992, moved to New Iberia from Illinois in 1961. They lived here until 1984, when they moved east, and returned in 1988.

He was a commercial diver who moved here to get into the oilfield industry. He opened Underwater Completion Team in 1972 and it operated to late 1983.

They had four children -- Becky Lopez of New Iberia; Starla Gautreau of Broussard; Beverly Totty of Nashville, and James Charles “J.C.” Daugherty of New Iberia.

LaCaze, whose second husband, the late Hilton LaCaze, died in 2003, visited the Toledo Bend camp twice since Daugherty moved there four years ago, she said. She went with one of her daughters, Totty, in 2007 and took refuge there from a hurricane in August 2008. “Oh, it’s gorgeous. It overlooks the lake, beautiful, peaceful. You forget the rest of the world. He loved it being so peaceful. He was doing what he enjoyed besides hunting,” she said.

Vermeire said 23,500 fish from Dunn’s Fish Farm in Fittstown, Okla., will be released Dec. 12 in the lake Daugherty loved so much. Two trucks are set to arrive at 8 a.m. at Cypress Bayou Marina. Vermeire said Daugherty family members plan to be there. Daugherty surely will be watching the proceedings appreciatively, too.