Katrina's Lives Lost:	Joseph 'Daddy Joe' Banks, 1924-2005
Submitted By: 		N.O.V.A January 2006
Source:			Times Picayune 01-11-2006

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At seven o'clock on many a Sunday morning in the Meraux house where
they raised their eight children, Lucille Banks could be heard
fussing at her husband, "Daddy Joe," for blaring B.B. King and
Johnny Taylor records while the rest of the family was getting
ready for church.

"When the neighbors would pass by, they'd ask, 'What's that you're
playing, Joe?' " his daughter Theresa Miller said. "He'd make them
a tape of whatever it was."

Though music substituted for church as his sanctuary, Joseph "Daddy
Joe" Banks embodied the golden rule, urging his six sons and two
daughters to cherish family as he and Lucille had always tried to
do.

The teenage sweethearts married in 1942, when Joseph was 18. He
joined the service shortly thereafter and served as an Army truck
driver during World War II.

After the war, he went to work as an auto mechanic, often spending
his free time under the hood of his own or his neighbors' cars.

Although his formal schooling ended in the seventh grade, Banks
instilled in his children the value of an education. Daughter
Lucille Ann Williams remembers that he would not accept being sick
as an excuse for not going to school.

"When my mama would take us by her mama's house on Mondays,
sometimes we'd miss school," she said. "When Daddy came home for
lunch, we'd have to go run down to the levee so he wouldn't see
us."

The couple, married for 60 years, was extremely devoted to each
other.

"Daddy would always say, 'You are only supposed to have one wife.
You stay with your wife. You take care of your wife. You take care
of your kids,' " Theresa remembered.

Banks kept his family close, literally and figuratively. When his
children were grown, the farthest any moved was 12 miles away, and
most lived within blocks. "Daddy Joe" liked to tell each of his
children stories about themselves, and he continued that tradition
with his 24 grandchildren, 38 great-grandchildren and seven great-
great-grandchildren.

Like many large families, the Bankses endured their share of
heartbreak. Joe and Lucille lost one son at 6 years old to a car
accident, and another at 30 to heart failure. Lucille suffered from
diabetes, and Joe eventually quit his job to care for her --
cooking, bathing her, administering medication.

When she died three years ago, he honored her by becoming a regular
church-goer. On the Sunday before Hurricane Katrina hit, Banks was
dressing for church when his children begged him to evacuate. When
he refused, his second-oldest son, Gerald, sent the rest of the
family to safety and stayed with his father.

On Monday morning, storm surge engulfed St. Bernard Parish and
swept the Banks house from its foundation.

"They climbed into a tree in Daddy's yard," Theresa said. "But the
house was coming toward them, so they had to jump."

Father and son got as far as the yard's fence before the surge
pulled "Daddy Joe" under.

"He had told Gerald that if he was going to go," Theresa said, "he
was going to go in his own home, the house that he and our mother
had created together."