Katrina's Lives Lost:	Mike Lala, 1931-2005
Submitted By: 		N.O.V.A November 2005
Source:			Times Picayune 10-17-2005

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Even with an Emmy Award on his résumé, there were signs that Mike Lala
might not be satisfied to spend his entire adult life carrying around a TV
camera.

For one thing, there was the snowball stand he opened on Chef Menteur
Highway back in the '60s, an odd side job for a WDSU-TV news photographer
who chased Hurricanes Camille and Betsy, went undercover to film the Ku
Klux Klan and captured the last New Orleans footage of Lee Harvey Oswald on
Aug. 21, 1963.

And then there were those tasty live remotes he shot for the 6 o'clock
news.

"We would leave the station around 4 each afternoon, and Mike would always
have a feast prepared in the production truck," said Bob Jones, who worked
as a reporter at WDSU-TV in the mid-1970s. "Gumbo, shrimp po-boys,
mufalettas and -- I guess it's OK to admit this now -- plenty of cold
beer."

So in 1985, this "very gutty camera guy," as former WDSU co-worker Jerry
Romig recalled him, walked away from the TV news business and reinvented
himself as a French Quarter restaurateur.

The fare at Lala's Olde Nawlins Cookery in the 700 block of Conti Street
was, for lack of a better term, local standard: red beans and rice for
lunch; jambalaya, etouffee, shrimp creole and catfish meuniere for dinner;
bread pudding and king cake for dessert. But the daily special was Lala
himself, a gregarious character and legendary ladies' man.

"I never walked into the restaurant when Mike wasn't in the dining room
talking to people," Jones said. "If he had all the money he didn't make
giving meals away, he'd have been a multimillionaire."

While Lala worked the room, Connie Tenhaaf ran the business. Their
partnership eventually became more than that; though they never married,
Lala and Tenhaaf were together for 20 years, bound by a shared love of New
Orleans and animals.

They had 20 pets with them when they took shelter inside the restaurant
Aug. 28. Tenhaaf, Lala and the animals stayed relatively comfortable,
dividing their time between the courtyard and the second-floor private
dining rooms. There was food in a third-floor cooler; she cooked him fried
chicken on his 74th birthday, Sept. 2, and he cooked for National Guardsmen
and first responders every chance he got.

Lala weathered the storm, but he couldn't weather the wait. An avid
carpenter, he was nearly finished renovating a boathouse and worried
constantly about its condition. He was distraught over news of Lakeview's
submersion and what it might mean for his plan to develop the old Masson's
site in West End as an upscale restaurant, Lala's of Lakeview. He had
things to do, places to be, people to talk to -- and he couldn't leave the
Quarter.

"Mike's not the type of guy to be caged up," Tenhaaf said.

He collapsed on Sept. 11 and lay dead in the restaurant for two days before
she was able to get word to Dr. Brobson Lutz, who came to take care for the
body. Lutz told Tenhaaf that Lala likely had a heart attack brought on by
the stress of the storm.

"Mike was full of life, a free spirit," former WDSU news director Ed Planer
said. "He shouldn't have died."