Katrina's Lives Lost:	Simpson, Mary Collette Little 1944-2005
Submitted By: 		N.O.V.A March 2006
Source:			Times Picayune 

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When Helen Little Tonglet was a little girl, she prayed and prayed for a
little sister. Then she waited. Nine years later, Mary was born.

"It was back in the day when they would bring mothers home in an
ambulance," Tonglet said. "And I know it was silly, but the day my mother
brought my little sister home, I gathered up the neighborhood kids to sit
on the curb so no one would park in front of our house before the ambulance
got there."

Mary arrived home in a pink blanket 61 years ago.

The sisters were close as they grew up. When Tonglet got married, she and
her husband bought a house big enough for her grandmother, her parents and
her little sister.

Mary later graduated from Chalmette High School, left home and got married.
Mary Collette Little Simpson had three children: a son, Tommy, and two
daughters, Leslie and Julie.

"My children called her 'Nanny,' and her children called me 'Nanny' because
we were good mothers to each other's children," said Tonglet, who had seven
children of her own.

Her sister remembers Mary as "smart in math; she skipped a grade in grammar
school. And she was artistic," often making Christmas presents for family
members by hand.

Tonglet helped her sister quit smoking, but not before she had developed
emphysema. The condition, a swelling of lung tissue that makes breathing
difficult, was one of the reasons Simpson chose not to evacuate. That, and
a little dog named Nisha.

"'I have too much medicine to bring. I will be fine here,' " Tonglet
remembers Simpson telling her. "And she wouldn't leave the dog."

So on Aug. 27, Tonglet left her Arabi home and dropped off food, supplies
and money at her sister's Chalmette apartment.

"She was full of life that night, joking and all," Tonglet said. "And she
was getting a kick out of that little dog. We had discouraged her from
getting a pet, with her health and all, but that dog made her so happy.
When I saw that, I knew it was the best thing."

Communication was impossible after the storm. Tonglet thought perhaps her
sister had been rescued before 12 feet of water entered the house.

But when Tonglet's son-in-law, who had lived next door to Simpson with
Tonglet's daughter, went back to the apartment two weeks after the storm,
he saw a date -- 9/12/05 -- an "X" and a number "1" written on Simpson's
door in black paint. He found no trace of Nisha.

On Oct. 28, Simpson's body was identified with dental records. She was
wearing her father's engraved wedding ring. Her funeral was Nov. 12 at St.
Rosalie Church in Harvey.

Tonglet lost her home, too, but she managed to salvage the last Christmas
present her sister gave her, and she brought it to the funeral to show
others. It was a pair of wooden figurines, two girls in bright-colored
dresses. The inscription underneath read, "If we live to be 103, best
friends we will always be."