Katrina's Lives Lost:	Trentecosta, Mary Ann Berlier 1928-2005
Submitted By: 		N.O.V.A March 2006
Source:			Times Picayune 

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Mary Ann Trentecosta was a woman of great enthusiasms: for Mardi Gras, for
gardening, for shopping, dancing, decorating, cats, fashion. She was a
woman who knew how to have a good time.

"On one of my last visits, I remember walking down the hallway to her room
and she had Fats Domino playing," said her daughter, Charlene Trentecosta,
"and I walked in and there she is, jitterbugging, by herself, to a 45
record." Her lifelong friend Joyce Campiere, isn't surprised at all.

"Mary Ann was the healthiest 77-year-old I ever knew," she said. "She was
youthful in her ways. She looked young, she stayed thin, she was so
energetic."

A child of the Lower 9th Ward, born and reared on St. Maurice Street,
Trentecosta graduated from Maumus High School and went to work as a
clerk/typist for the Navy during World War II -- a government girl, as they
were known -- at a discharge station at the Lakefront. Campiere worked in
the office next door and the two teenagers had the time of their lives.

"We were young and all the sailors were so happy to be discharged,"
Campiere said. "We went on picnics and dances with them. We ate in the mess
hall. That was a fun job."

The two women found fun as well on Canal Street, where they would get
dressed up and spend the day.

"We were shopping buddies," Campiere said. "We'd go to town, have lunch
sometimes at Holmes, go to Krauss. Once a year, we'd go to that oyster bar,
Felix's, and get an oyster po-boy. Or we'd spend the day in the French
Quarter, start off with coffee and beignets at Morning Call and then go to
all the little shops."

Later, Trentecosta took a job at the Port of Embarkation on Poland Avenue
but soon quit to marry a man who went into the wedding-reception business,
as part owner of the Chiffon Room in Arabi and the Tiffany Room in
Chalmette. For awhile in the late 1970s, Trentecosta opened a business of
her own, a women's clothing store called Purrfect Fashions.

For most of her life, though, Trentecosta cultivated homier pursuits.
Although her husband died more than 20 years ago, she had three children,
three grandchildren and one great-grandchild and she ran an animated
household. Outside, her lively garden was full of pass-along plants:
morning glories along the wooden fence, yellow-eyed daisies, angel's
trumpets, maidenhair fern, four o'clocks and banana trees. Inside, she kept
the rooms spruced up with seasonal decorations: for Christmas,
Thanksgiving, Easter, Valentine's Day, Halloween and especially for Mardi
Gras.

"Mardi Gras was one of her biggest things," says her daughter. "She was a
member of Pandora. Oh my god, she was a Mardi Gras enthusiast."

Trentecosta had a taste for gambling, too, and made frequent forays to Las
Vegas, where she would stay at the Mirage Hotel, play the roulette wheel
and take in the big shows.

As Hurricane Katrina was bearing down on New Orleans, Trentecosta's friends
and family beseeched her to leave. "She turned everybody down," Charlene
said. "She didn't want to be run off by any storm. She said, 'Baby, I don't
even like to drive to Baton Rouge and that's only an hour and a half.' "

Charlene talked to her mother on Sunday night and again on Monday morning.
All was well, Trentecosta reported, and she thought she'd take a nap.

"I think she slept through the whole thing," Charlene said. "I pray she
slept through it. The water got about 6 feet high in her house. The bed
floated up and turned around and landed by the door."

Five months after the storm, when Campiere returned to New Orleans, she
found her telephone among her belongings. "My daughter looked at the caller
ID," she said, "and she said, 'Mama, Miss Mary Ann called on August 28th at
10-something in the morning.' She died on August 29th. I missed her last
call."