Katrina's Lives Lost:	Della Vern Desselle Badeaux, 1923-2005
Submitted By: 		N.O.V.A November 2005
Source:			Times Picayune 10-19-2005

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"The bingo lady" was how everybody knew her, says her oldest child,
Jeanette Adams, about Della Vern Desselle Badeaux. "I said, 'Mama, you
ought to have BINGO on your license plate,' she loved it that much."

"And lucky? Even now I could mention bingo and my mama would probably come
out her grave," says son Robert Desselle. "Everybody else could just go
home, because if my mama played, she was going to win."

But the lucky streak came late in his mother's life. Born in Bordelonville,
she and her first husband, Albert Desselle, raised seven children on a
dairy farm there; an eighth died two days after his birth. During those
days, "they didn't have enough money to buy a coffin, and so they buried my
brother in an apple crate," Robert says. "But Mama made it through. She
always did."

Later, after disease struck the cows, the family lost all they had, and
everybody moved to a two-bedroom house in Avondale. Her husband found work
as a welder, and after earning her GED, Badeaux went to work as a cashier
at the TG&Y, where she developed treasured friendships, her daughter says,
and stayed for 30 years. For many years during that time, she worked
weekdays at the store, weekends with son Robert at his Lafitte Welding
Works; all told, she stayed with Lafitte for 20 years.

Badeaux was a devout Catholic known by neighbors for everyday kindnesses.
Her greatest strength came from St. Jude, to whom "she turned it all over,"
Robert says; her greatest joy, "just being with her family -- even to the
point of cleaning everybody's houses."

She literally ironed out her problems. "People get depressed, they do
something to feel better. For Mama, that was ironing," Jeanette says. "She
loved that ironing -- and jitterbugging, all kinds of dancing. She taught
my sister and me to dance when we were 4 years old."

In middle age, Badeaux and her husband of 27 years divorced. In her 70s,
she married retiree Nelson Badeaux, who died some 10 years ago. She lived
for the past two years with her youngest son Elbert Desselle, in Arabi.

During Katrina, Badeaux, who was diagnosed in 2003 as having dementia and
Parkinson's disease, became severely dehydrated, and was evacuated to the
Superdome, then moved to Shreveport and, finally, to a nursing home in
Baton Rouge, where she died. Because the family tomb in Lakelawn Cemeteries
bore mud and debris from the storm, the children buried their mother in
McDonoghville Cemetery in Gretna. Besides her eight children, who also
include Lolita Smith, Alberta Breecher and Tommy and Roland Desselle, she
had 22 grandchildren, 29 great-grandchildren and one great-great-
grandchild.

They all may miss her most come this New Year's Day. That was the time,
Robert says, "when even though she couldn't afford it, and no matter how
big the family grew, everyone was invited to spend the day at Mama's little
house on Winona Drive.

"She just loved us all so much."