Katrina's Lives Lost:	Lylton Andrew Collins, 1945-2005
Submitted By: 		N.O.V.A December 2005
Source:			Times Picayune 12-07-2005

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"It was 'lead, follow or get out of the way' with my dad," said Darius
Collins Sr. of his father, Lylton Andrew Collins, a New Orleans native who
raised his two sons, Darius and Lylton Collins Jr., in eastern New Orleans.
"A true trailblazer, that's who my father was to us."

Lylton was born in 1945 at Charity Hospital, and became the first in his
family to attend and graduate from college. He studied accounting at
Grambling State University, where he met his future wife, Vina. The pair
kept in touch while Lylton served in Vietnam, and when he returned to the
States after three years in the Army, he took a job in the university's
accounting department to be close to her.

Shortly after she finished school, the couple married and moved to Texas,
then Alabama and New York City, where Lylton did financial work for the
Veterans Administration. After more than a decade in New York, Collins began
longing for home and in 1980 moved his family back to New Orleans, where he
was named the assistant chief of the New Orleans VA fiscal department.

Vina said her husband never stopped missing the city and wanted to share his
love for Mardi Gras, gumbo and good music with his children.

"I'll never forget him teaching us how to make gumbo," Lylton Collins Jr.
said. "We'd make the rounds to the Circle Food Store and buy all the meat.
Then I'd cut up the sausage and my brother peeled the shrimp."

When father and sons weren't cooking, they enjoyed watching Saints games
together. Though they took occasional fishing trips, Lylton wasn't a big
outdoorsman; he often sat on the boat and watched TV while the others were
wetting a line.

A jazz music aficionado, Lylton often would encourage his son Darius to sing
for him. The Sunday night before Katrina hit, as he waited out the storm,
Lylton asked Darius, who was in Las Vegas, to sing "I'll Fly Away" over the
phone.

His son obliged and gave up trying to convince his father to evacuate. Vina
had made her way to Shreveport on Saturday, but Lylton was determined to
stay in his home.

The family last spoke to Lylton around 5 p.m. Aug. 29. There was water in
their neighborhood, but no more than they had experienced in previous
floods; Lylton did not sound worried, they said. Vina speculates that once
the phone lines died, her husband went to sleep, just as he had done in
previous storms, and continued sleeping as the water rose and eventually
engulfed him.

"I know how hard my husband could sleep," Vina said. "When that water rose,
he was sleeping and just didn't know what hit him.

"It never dawned on him that he wouldn't be safe in our house. Never."

His body was recovered in his home and only recently released from St.
Gabriel's morgue.

"He felt if it was his time to go he wouldn't want to be anywhere more than
New Orleans," Darius said. "He would say to us, 'Stand for something or fall
for anything,' and that's how he felt about New Orleans. He stood firm in
his love for his home -- this city."