Leonard Smith

Abstract

Born in Clarendon, Arkansas, on November 17, 1938, Leonard Smith was the oldest of seven children reared by sharecropping parents. He never had enough money growing up, and he found the omnipresent racism intolerable. “This ain’ t the place for you,” Leonard recalls his grandmother advising him in his youth. He moved to Pine Bluff in the middle of his junior year and lived with one of two uncles. Four days after he graduated from Merrill High School in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, he joined the U.S. Navy and traveled all around the world. During his fourteen years of service, Leonard saw active duty as a Navy medic in Korea, the Vietnam War, the Formosa Straits, and during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Leonard fought and was wounded in Vietnam while he served with the Fleet Marine Force. In San Diego, Leonard worked for decades as a carpenter and cabinet maker. During his second retirement, he began his love af fair with New Orleans, where he traveled once a year for Mardi Gras until he relocated there permanently in the late 1990s. One of his first acts was to join the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club, a multimillion dollar organization especially well known for its annual Zulu Ball and its community outreach efforts.¹ In 2004, he was elected “Mr. Big Stuff,” the Zulu who carries the crown for the king during Mardi Gras. Before Katrina made landfall, Leonard made sure his wife, Dorothy, was evacuated from New Orleans, but stayed himself to protect his property and to safeguard, he thought, his fragile health. He was the survivor of many life-threatening situations, including cancer most recently, and was not intimidated by a hurricane.

This interview took place in Waterproof, Louisiana, on November 8, 2005, in the living room of Leonard’s in-laws’ home, where he was staying with his wife.² A tall, lanky man, Leonard was wearing black dress slacks and a matching button-down shirt with a gold scorpion medallion dangling from a gold chain around his neck. He immediately got down to the business at hand and told his story with very little prompting from D’Ann.

Leonard tells his story of being precariously positioned on his rooftop for three days while he waited to be rescued. He evaluates the rescue effort with a more demanding standard than civilians might use because of his wartime experiences. He was eventually airlifted along with his neighbors to a staging area on Causeway Boulevard in Metairie and then driven with a police escort to a shelter in Houma, Louisiana, where he received critical medical care. He dedicates this chapter to the people of Houma, Louisiana.