Katrina's Lives Lost:	Lala, Althea Martin 1929-2005
Submitted By: 		N.O.V.A March 2006
Source:			Times Picayune 

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Early last summer, Althea "Alley" Martin Lala mentioned to her daughters
that when she died, she wanted to be cremated, her ashes tossed into Lake
Pontchartrain.

"She loved the lake," Jane Lala Estopinal said. "Growing up, my parents had
a fishing camp in the Rigolets, and my mother would fish only on the Lake
Pontchartrain side, never the Lake Catherine side."

When the winds or a storm would kick up the lake, Lala always thought the
choppy waters were a sight to see.

"She would say to her older daughter, 'Go get doughnuts, and go get your
friends, and go out to the lakefront.'"

Estopinal and her sister, Susan Lala Cole, grew up in Lakeview, attending
St. Dominic's School and later Mount Carmel High. Their parents lived on
General Haig Street in the house that their father, a steel fabricator,
built in 1959.

The "fiercely independent" Lala did her own repairs, tended to her yard and
her housekeeping, and even volunteered to repair small appliances for
neighbors. With a single shovel and her own steam, she would do the work of
two men spreading a truckload of dirt across her lawn every year. But her
greatest strength, her daughters say, was in playing a supportive role.

"She was always there for us, and she helped my father get his new business
going when we were growing up," Estopinal said.

Lala, 76, was a petite woman, only 5 feet tall, but "she was German, and
all muscle," Estopinal said. If she cursed, she did so in Italian. Her
daughters' classmates saw Lala as the "fun" mother.

"My mother used to pack up the station wagon with kids and drive us down
Bourbon Street to see the 'ooh-la-la girls,' but she made us wear
sunglasses so we wouldn't see everything," Estopinal said.

Cole recalls late-night spins to Cafe du Monde when the cafe had curb
service. The girls would head home with powdered sugar all over their
pajamas.

A resident of Lakeview for 48 years, Lala knew everyone, but had a weakness
for names. She would make up her own.

"Once I called a woman at the drugstore by her real name, and she said,
'Oh, no, call me Poinsettia. That's what your Mom calls me.'"

So it made sense, when Lala refused to leave her Lakeview home, that no one
could take her independence from her. Even when Estopinal, also a resident
of Lakeview, decided to evacuate at the last minute, Lala held fast,
reminding her daughter that she had weathered Hurricane Betsy. The highway
traffic, she believed, would be a tougher foe to face.

When the storm passed, Lala's daughters continued to call. But answering
the phone was keeping Lala from one of her favorite chores.

"Y'all need to quit callin' me. The storm's over with. I'm going outside to
clean up the mess," Lala informed her daughters.

When the devastation of the storm became clear, Lala's family began to
search for her in shelters, thinking she had been rescued. But "Alley" had
died in her home the day the water rose 7 feet, sloshing just below the
pull-down door of the attic, where she had taken refuge.

The heat that day was brutal. Undisturbed papers in the only chair in the
attic indicate she may have never taken a seat.

"She could afford to live any way she wished, but she stayed who she was
from the day she was born," Estopinal said. "A change in status or income
meant nothing to her. She was who she was."