Liz Watkins
Grand Isle, Louisiana What is your favorite memory from Grand Isle? “I have so many. We started back in the 60’s with my family. My favorite memory, now that my kids are grown with their own families, are thanksgiving, Easter, and the 4th of July. They all come down and visit us to do beach time, volleyball tournaments, cooking, eating, I make desserts for everyone. That’s my favorite memory, being able to expose the kids to this type of living. Riding in the golf cart, going to the store, riding to the post office to check the post office box. Just normal things they don’t get to do living in New Orleans and Houma.” What is Grand Isle’s biggest loss from Ida? “I think the biggest loss is all the camps that the older generations had built by hand and had passed it down from generations. Families would come through and just have fun. Ida took a lot of those camps away, especially in Cheniere and the beginning of the island. I feel like that’s going to be a very big loss because I feel like people that just loved Grand Isle for what it’s worth and the beauty of the island and its people. That’s just something that’s not going to be able to be replaced.” What’s the future of Grand Isle? “I think it will come back. I think the problem is that regular income people will find it hard to rebuild their places. I think it’s going to end up being like the six figure camps or houses that are being put up now. I think the whole atmosphere will be changing. It will likely be more of an upper middle to higher class. The places won’t be like the old places where everyone gets around and goes to grandpa’s old camp. I don’t think people will be able to afford the insurance or the rebuilding. I just think it’s going to be hard for most people to be able to rebuild.”
Dex Duet
Thibodaux, Louisiana What is your favorite memory from Grand Isle? “I think my favorite memory was later in life, actually right before Ida hit. There was like a four-month span, I live in Thibodaux currently but I like to visit from time to time cause it’s close to my hometown, but every time I would go I would meet up with my friends from my home town. We would go down to the beach at 4 in the morning right when the sun comes up and we would catch crabs and have a big crab boil. That was always tons of fun.” What is Grand Isle’s biggest loss from Ida? “Probably the culture. There’s a lot you can say about physical damage and things loss, but it’s the people, their home, their sense of safety, their feeling of togetherness, because that’s what it is in South Lafourche. I feel like that’s kind of lost right now.” What’s the future of Grand Isle? “If you had asked me that right after Ida, I’d have said it’s probably never coming back and it’s just going to be a wasteland. I think they’re going to rebuild though. I’ve heard talks about that a lot lately. Watching the bayou come back from this is like “this is it, this killed the Bayou,” but I really do have hope for them. They’re turning it around. I think it’s going to take some time, but I think with the people who do exist down there, it will eventually find itself back to normal.”
Rachel Hebert
Schriever, Louisiana What is your favorite memory from Grand Isle? “My favorite memory was about five years ago when we went on a big family trip, we rented a huge cabin and we tried to do some offshore fishing and the weather was too bad, but we fished off the dock and we spent lots of time playing games and cooking and things like that.” What is Grand Isle’s biggest loss from Ida? “I live an hour and a half away from Grand Isle, but I still consider myself a tourist because we would go there often and my husband my brother-in-law and always would go offshore fishing and they have not been able to go. We would go and rent places and we would do lots of rodeos.I think so many people are not going to be able to go because so many of the rental properties have been so damaged.” What’s the future of Grand Isle? “I think it will come back. It has before so many times for so many other major hurricanes like Katrina and things. It’s come back because it’s such an important part of Louisiana and its history. Like I said, I’ve just remembered going there since I was a child so I do believe that it’ll come back. It’ll take a while, but the people there love it.”
Tina Boudreaux
Thibodaux, Louisiana What is your favorite memory from Grand Isle? “My favorite memory of Grand Isle was [when] I was a young girl, and we would go floundering in the bay. My dad was walking in the bay floundering, and there was a hole that we didn’t see and he fell in the hole. It was just some really great memories of fishing and crabbing, it’s been my great memories.” What is Grand Isle’s biggest loss from Ida? “I think that they will recover with the people of Grand Isle. The residents are very resilient people who love where they’re from, so they will do whatever it takes to get their home back.” What’s the future of Grand Isle? “I think tourism is going to be a big part of that, just people still going there you know just showing support to the community, the rodeos that they have, just holidays. People tend to go there for the 4th of July, Memorial Day, so continuing to do the things that honestly they’ve always done best is how I think they will recover.”
Robert Collins
Grand Isle, Louisiana What is your favorite memory from Grand Isle? “I’ve lived here all my life. I loved growing up here and fishing.” What is Grand Isle’s biggest loss from Ida? “The major loss that nobody wants to say is that the land is going to become so expensive to live on. The people that are living down here are not going to be able to afford to live down here. The people with more money are going to buy the land and eventually it’s just going to be all tourists. So the main loss would be the locals, everything else will come back.” What’s the future of Grand Isle? “The future is focused on tourism and trying to get the island attractive enough for people to come down. When you’re talking about the island, you’re talking about a community, and what makes a community strong is numbers. However, we should focus on jobs before we focus on tourism.”
Dylan Leblanc
Grand Isle, Louisiana What is your favorite memory from Grand Isle? “My favorite memory from Grand Isle is hunting with my grandparents when I was younger and getting to do it every weekend when we weren’t at school.” What is Grand Isle’s biggest loss from Ida? “Grand Isle’s biggest loss is probably the people. We’ve lost a lot of people that have moved off and a lot of memories definitely. A lot of buildings ain’t here no more.” What’s the future of Grand Isle? “I think we’re going to bounce back definitely, but it’s never going to be the same [as] how it was. It’s going to be different, we’re gonna have to adjust and get back to it.”
Walter Theriot
Grand Isle, Louisiana What is your favorite memory from Grand Isle? “Hunting and fishing with my kids, with my parents and all that when I was younger” What is Grand Isle’s biggest loss from Ida? “Lot of old buildings we lost. We had memories that we grew up with that I remember when I was a kid” What’s the future of Grand Isle? “We’re gonna come back. It’s gonna take a lot of time, but we’ll be back. We’re strong.”
Joseph Boudreaux
Raceland, Louisiana Boudreaux is originally from Grand Isle What is your favorite memory from Grand Isle? “My most favorite memory is being able to crab. Another one was from when I was much younger. I’d take a 12-foot plywood boat with about 24 inches across and I would travel the beaches of Grand Terre with my wife and son. Today with the high powered boats we would get run off of the water.” What is Grand Isle’s biggest loss from Ida? “I think the biggest loss to Grand Isle is going to be the make-up of the families that returned to the island for summer recreation – They are not gonna be able to afford it.” What’s the future of Grand Isle? “Grand Isle will be more of a haven for well-to-do families, or families willing to get out and do things to make the island safe.”
Rose Bird
Grand Isle, Louisiana What is your favorite memory from Grand Isle? “I would have to say just walking along the island at night with my friends after work or after school. Being able to work there was a lot of fun as well. I loved working on the island and being with the community and the tourists.” What is Grand Isle’s biggest loss from Ida? “I would definitely say the population. So many people and families who have lived their whole lives on the island, and many friends and family members of mine, decided that they couldn’t handle the loss anymore. It really put a dent into the community and everyone that anyone knew on the island.” What’s the future of Grand Isle? “I definitely think that it’s being repaired and that it will come back stronger than ever. I don’t think that the island will have the same family presence it once had. I think it will be more of a tourist spot now, but I think that those stronger families that did stay on the island will continue to leave remnants of that family place everybody once knew.”
Dana and Dale Frickey
Brothers from Paradis, Louisiana What is your favorite memory from Grand Isle? “Fishing on the bridge with my grandkids catching fish. When we were like 7 years old my daddy took us to Grand Isle in a 1956 Volkswagen bus. We slept in a tent and a tide came up in the middle of the night and soaked the tent. Sand everywhere! It was probably 1965, that was a memory!” What is Grand Isle’s biggest loss from Ida? “Camps. The camp owners lost. I’m thinking 50 percent destroyed or partially destroyed from Hurricane Ida. On the street we are on there were 10 camps. On the street across there were 10 camps. All the camps are gone. 100-year-old camps are gone. There is only one left and it is ours. We built it again after Katrina to match all of the requirements. Every camp is gone. The 10-foot surge and tidal waves took out almost every old camp that was not built to the requirements. I’m sure that’s why we made it. We are on the Cheniere before the bridge. You saw all the pictures like “Alright…ok…it’s bad…it looks bad,” but when you go down there and you look at the structures, it’s overwhelming… it’s gone.” What’s the future of Grand Isle? “I think the future of Grand Isle is ‘build back better’. It is a barrier island which protects everything north of it. They will rebuild. They will rebuild the sand dunes, rebuild with rocks.If you lose Grand Isle we will have water here in Paradis. Grand Isle ain’t going anywhere. Fishing, tourism, camping, it will come back bigger and better.”