Fleur de Lis Society
182 East Howard Avenue
Biloxi, MS 39533
After Katrina took our building away, there was no consideration about going anyplace else. Our people, no matter where they’re at, they’ll always know if they come to this area the French Club is still here. – Leroy Duvall
When Leroy Duvall refers to himself as “one of the younger people,” it’s despite his 64 years, but it’s without a trace of irony. Part of it is that he is the President of the Fleur de Lis Society, a club half the size of what it once was because its membership is slowly passing from old age. And part of it is that, after 30 years of shrimping on the Gulf, his body still feels young. Eventually, the economic repercussions of endangered turtles forced him to retire from shrimping, and when Hurricane Katrina washed away his bakery, he retired from that, too. Mr. Leroy can now often be found keeping the books or taking out the trash of the newly reopened Fleur de Lis Society, a place that reminds many of its displaced members of home, and reminds Biloxi of its Cajun heritage.
What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.
Subject: Leroy Duvall, President of the Fleur de Lis Society and retired shrimper
Date: August 22, 2008
Location: Fleur de Lis Society, Biloxi, MS
Interviewer & Photographer: Francis Lam
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Francis Lam: This is Francis Lam for the Southern Foodways Alliance. Today is Friday, August 22, 2008. I’m with Leroy Duvall at the Fleur De Lis Society here Biloxi, Mississippi, commonly known as the French Club. Today we’re going to be talking about the French community in Biloxi and also his time as a shrimper. Mr. Leroy would you mind telling us your name, age, and occupation?
Leroy Duvall: Leroy Duvall; my age is 64. I was born in 1943 and actually right now I’m semi-retired or retired. I’m not working anymore right now.
For 30 years I was a commercial fisherman in the shrimping industry in Biloxi. I owned two vessels, the Southern Pride and the Southern Comfort, and I ran them successfully ‘til about 1992 I sold the boats and got out of the shrimping industry and I got into the French bread. We had a bakery here—my sister and I—it’s called Desporte’s. We made a lot of the French bread and I did that for the last 14 years until Katrina took the business away. And then I was semi—I’m retired, actually. Right now I’m President of Fleur de Lis Society.
Your parents came over from Louisiana; could you talk about where they came from and when and why?
My mother came from Jeanerette, Louisiana. The year I don’t exactly know—it had to be in maybe the ‘30s—and my father came from New Orleans, Louisiana approximately about the same time. They met in Biloxi and so they got married and myself and my two sisters were born right here in Biloxi.
They both came here for the seafood industry. My father was a fisherman—commercial shrimper; he was a Captain for many years and my mother worked in the seafood factories.
Could you describe a little bit your neighborhood you lived in when you were growing up? Who were your neighbors?
My neighbors were mostly commercial fishermen. My uncle and them lived across the street. He was in the fishing industry. My next-door neighbors, the Broussards they were in the seafood industry, just approximately everybody in this area, they were in the seafood industry or related to it some way, you know. They was either in the factories, on the boats, or—everybody did the same thing. That’s the only occupation around here at the time. The men worked on the boats and the women mostly worked in the seafood processing plants.
And were many of your neighbors French as well?
Yes. They was the Broussards, the Heberts, and the—I mean there were some Slavonians around our area too; there was a lot of Slavonians on this end of town and they were here, the Vojanoviches, the Talijaniciches. But we were all raised together and all the kids went to school together and the parents went out to dances together. It wasn’t—it was no negative at all between the two ethnic groups; they all got along because they were all neighbors and they all did the same thing, worked in the same place everyone got along.
So it sounds like the community you grew up in here—on The Point was very tight-knit. Has that changed over the time?
Well, there was no place for the younger ones, when they got old enough to get married, to move or buy a home so they moved into different areas like Ocean Springs across the Bay, North Biloxi, you know. The kids didn’t live in this area because there wasn’t no place buy anymore; it was just most of the older people and they kept getting older. The old people started passing away, and after they had gone, it just—there wasn’t nothing left. And then Katrina finished it off by taking everything out and there was nothing left.
A lot of the older people—they’re too old to try to come back down here and start over again, so most of them moved away. They owned everything and a lot of them didn’t carry insurance because they were the old group and they didn’t think they needed it. I don’t think they’ll ever come back to this area; I don’t really do.
Is it still possible to keep in touch with them through the club?
Oh yes, they come to the club. That’s one reason we put the club back down here. In our Charter—back in 1934 in our Bylaws— one of the first paragraphs says the French Club, the Fleur De Lis Society will be at 182 East Howard Avenue. And that’s why when we, after Katrina took our building away, there was no consideration about going anyplace else. We knew we were coming back; we owned the property and we were going to come back to our property and this is where we built at. That way our people, no matter where they’re at, they know whenever they come back, we’re here, you know? They’ll always know if they come to this area the French Club is still here. We’re back again; we’re getting ready to open back up and everyone is wanting to go. They want to come back and that’s what we’re trying to do; we’re trying to get it back for the people.
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The membership, at 300, is a lot of people. But actually it has come down from the peak of maybe 500 or 600 you said at one point. Why was there that decline?
Well I think most of the decline is a lot of people from this area were getting older and they kept getting older. My son is a member but he’s not as active or don’t come around as much, but a lot of people it’s just—East Biloxi started dying away.
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Do you have events that actively promote or preserve French culture?
Well we have what they call a Fais-Do-Do—what the French people call a street dance. You know it’s just like a big party; a lot of people bring food and—and you set up little booths and have dancing and have a little band. We have shrimp boils here; we have the crawfish boils here; we have functions for people we know in the community that is in bad shape financially or something, like cancer patients or somebody that really needs help. We are a non-profit organization. We’re just here to let the people have a good time and try to serve the community. We are not a place that is trying to make a lot of money; we’re just trying to survive that’s all—for the people.
And when you were growing up was there a strong sense of being French? Was there a strong sense of that culture?
Yes it was—actually it was. You can go to some of the neighbors’ houses and the mothers and fathers would be speaking French. That’s what they spoke. They could speak English but they chose to speak French. And I’m sorry that we lost that heritage. I don’t really speak very much French. I wish I did but I don’t. And a lot of us don’t—the younger people, you know. I’m saying younger—50 to 60 years old—a lot of our older people they speak French very well.
The French are predominantly Catholic, you know. We didn’t eat meat on Fridays. We had some kind of seafood. You know, even when the Church changed and went to just—you couldn’t [eat meat on Fridays] just during Lent, we still didn’t. We had gumbos and we ate like just any kind of French food that—gumbo or red beans and rice, which is American anyway, but that’s the kind of food we had. We had fried fish or fried shrimp or boiled crabs; it’s just mostly seafood because that’s the way we were. The French had a lot of influence and it’s hard to beat a French cook [Laughs]; a very seasoned food.
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Your father was out on the water in the Gulf and your mother in the factory. When did you get started working in that industry?
I worked with my father when I was in high school and summertime I’d work with him. And then when I got out of the military—I wasn’t in the military but a couple of years; I got drafted in ’65 and got out in ’67 and so when I got out I went back to the seafood industry and I—I stayed in it for about 30 years. And—and I enjoyed it; it was a good life. It was an honest living and—and it was a good living.
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Where would you go in the Gulf to do your shrimping?
I shrimped anywhere from Key West, Florida to Brownsville, Texas. I shrimped the whole Gulf; I had two large boats—well large, I’d say 75-footers. In May and June we’d be in this area here off the Gulf Coast of Mississippi and July—August we would be off the Louisiana Coast. And in September, October, and November, we’d be down off the Texas Coast. Then we’d come back here for our Christmas holidays and all, and in January, February, and March we worked the Florida Coast, but we worked all over the Gulf. I even been to Mexico, down in the Yucatan, and shrimped down there for a while. I mean I actually crossed the Gulf, caught the shrimp and crossed back to sell them here. We couldn’t go into Mexican waters; it was illegal for us to be there but we were off the Coast of Mexico.
See, in the summertime in May and June and July and August, all the way to part of the September, it’s called the brown shrimp season. And then from there on ‘til Christmas it’s the white shrimp season and they’re predominantly more to the west. You can catch more of them down that way toward Texas and Louisiana than you do here. And then in the winter months there’s hardly no brown shrimp or white shrimp in this area. Florida has what they call a pink shrimp and we would go that way to catch those. It was predominantly you were following the migration. You knew where they were going to be, where they should be at that time of year.
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Could you describe how you would actually go and catch the shrimp?
Well you would just—you’d pull a little try-net is what you call it, and that actually lets you know what’s on the bottom, and you determine how long you can pull your big nets, so you don’t want to get them too full. And you work until dark and usually the shrimp they’ll be strictly daytime or they’ll be strictly night. There’s very few times they will be both. The white shrimp is predominantly a daytime shrimp; you catch them in daytime. But the brown shrimp and the other pink shrimp is mostly a nighttime; you’d work just nights. And you learn that over the years.
So you would throw out a try-net to see what was on the—?
What was on the bottom. And you can tell how long you can drag, if there’s any amount of shrimp there. Maybe you don’t want to stay there because you’re not catching many shrimp in the try-net, so you pick up and don’t waste a whole lot of time in the place there’s not nothing going on.
The try-net determines how long you can drag it [the big net], you know whether—if you feel like you can drag it two hours you pick it up, and then your crew has to go through it and sort out the shrimp from the by-catch, you know fish or whatever else—and push that back overboard. They have to pick the shrimp out of that. It’s a lot of work involved in that.
Just over and over until you decided you had caught a good catch and you’d come home. Sometimes you’ll stay five or six days; sometimes you’ll be gone ten or twelve days and the boats were big enough that you had all of the conveniences of home. We had air-conditioning; we had television; we had bathrooms and we—we’d buy enough supplies to keep us going that long.
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Do you remember when you actually made the decision to get out of shrimping, to sell your boats and get out of the industry?
Yes; and it’s nothing against the United States government but when they came up with the turtle excluders. The endangered species was the Kemp’s Ridley turtle. But I looked in the encyclopedia; they’re not even indigenous to the Gulf of Mexico. I have never caught one in my life. But this turtle excluder is a 32-inch hole right in front of your bag where all the shrimp go, and you lose about a third of your profit, because the shrimp are going to get out of there. I stayed in that business for a while, but there’s very few businesses that can actually operate with a third loss. So it didn’t take me long to figure out that I wasn’t going to stay in this business anymore and I got rid of my boats and it’s mainly because of the United States government and I’m not scared to say that. They did it, and they knew they was wrong when they did it, but it doesn’t matter; it’s over with now. A lot of the people got out of the business because of that. You just can't take a loss like that.
These are turtles that are supposed to be endangered; I didn’t even know what they were. I mean it’s not like the big turtles—and my whole life, 25 years, if I caught two or three turtles, that was plenty. We’ve never thrown a dead turtle overboard. But when they take one-third of your profit it’s time to move on. You can't—and no business can survive like that and that’s what’s wrong with the shrimping industry right now.
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You were Shrimp King in 1992 and that’s related to the blessing of the fleet. Can you talk about the blessing of the fleet, what it is?
Really it comes under the Catholic faith. It was formed back probably70 years ago. The Church down here, St. Michael’s Catholic Church, they took one day of the year before the shrimp season would open - it’s usually the first week in June - and they would do a blessing of the fleet before they went out to sea. The Catholic priest would get on the back of one of the boats and the boats would parade past him. A lot of them had little decorations on them and all, and they had their families onboard; it was like a day at the islands. But they’d pass by the Priest and he would bless the vessels, you know, with holy water and it started like that. They would always name a Shrimp King. It was one of the guys that always did good in the shrimping industry and was well known and well liked. The Shrimp King was actually picked by the Church or the City - there wasn’t no vote to that, but you had to earn it. And then maybe 10 or 12 of the young girls they would have like a pageant, you know? They would ask them a lot of questions of their knowledge. The girls had to have a lot of knowledge of the seafood industry, too, and they had to be related. It had to be their dad or their grandfather; somebody had to be in the seafood industry.
There’s not as many boats in Biloxi now because of the casinos; there’s very few shrimp boats left here. Biloxi was known as the shrimp basket of the world at one time; it had a large vessel you know—fleet of vessels but sometimes it would be 150 to 200 boats in the parade. And nowadays you’re lucky if you’ve got 30 or 40 because there’s just nobody. The casinos moved in and land got so valuable that everybody sold out to casinos, and there’s very few seafood plants left in Biloxi. They used to be all over these beaches but there’s only two or three companies left that actually operate.
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What are the things you miss about doing that work?
Well it’s the—it’s a freedom of being out there. You don’t have to show up at 9:00 to 5:00 every day. I mean you may be gone a week or so at a time; and you know what you got to do, and it’s very hard work and sometimes it’s a dangerous work out there, but it was just a freedom of being out there. No traffic jams; no 9:00 to 5:00—you just—you worked. You knew you had to work because that’s the way you make your money. But it was just a pleasure of being out there and the freedom and the good fresh air.
But you’re gone from home so much. You know you’re not with your families as often as you want to be. I mean, my children both went to college, but a lot of times when they were younger, I wasn’t there. You know, my wife was there with them but I’d be gone 10, 12, 14 days and you miss that, you know, not being home with your children and your wife. And you’re raising your kids and lucky you have a good wife to take care of them while you’re gone. And they never wanted for anything but you’ll decide that you had enough, you know. And then when the turtle excluder came in and the money wasn’t quite as good as it was, it wasn’t no problem at all making that decision to get out.
Did you at any point think that maybe your children would take up the industry after you?
No, I didn’t want them to. I didn’t want them to. That’s how come I sent them to college. I mean, I had a little college too, but I mean I didn’t stay at college. I liked the seafood industry, but I knew there wasn’t no future in it so I made sure both of our children got college degrees. One of them is a Registered Nurse and the other one is a CPA. So they got their degrees and they’re doing very well. They’re not in the seafood industry but that’s—that’s all right. You know they don’t need to be in it now; it’s—it’s not—the money is not there anymore. It’s a lot of hard work and it’s dangerous and I wouldn’t want—even though my children are grown now, I wouldn’t want to see my son out there doing that. You always want better for your children.
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Do you remember when Vietnamese people started getting into the shrimping industry?
Yes, I did and I’m not a prejudiced person—not really. Maybe I shouldn’t say but, the only thing I disliked about it is, and I knew it was a true story, that the Vietnamese did get a lot of breaks that the American fishermen couldn’t get. They got low interest loans, where the American fishermen couldn’t apply for them because we weren’t a minority. My ex-wife used to work at the bank and sometimes, in the wintertime when the season was slow and most of the fishermen would shut their boats down because it wasn’t worth going out anymore, the Vietnamese were getting checks every week for supplemental income. We couldn’t apply for that because we weren’t a minority. And I think this country did wrong; they gave a lot of the stuff to people that weren’t here all this time that worked all their life and paid all this Social Security. I have nothing against the Vietnamese people. I think it’s the United States government that was wrong—what they did because they didn’t give everybody the same opportunity. And that’s—that’s one thing I didn’t care for. I have nothing against Vietnamese people; they’re good hard-working people. I just didn’t like the way things happened.
Do you remember how the relations were? Was there tension?
Very tense; the American fishermen did not care for the Vietnamese fishermen at all. They knew what was going on. They didn’t want them around and there’s no lying about it; I mean it’s a true story—never cared for them, never cared to have them around us. Every fishermen felt the same way— here’s these guys that just came into this country, not doing nothing, and then all of the sudden they got these nice boats that they pay for them or they don’t pay for them, the government don’t care. But we had loan notes to make; we had to pay. If we didn’t we got repossessed or something. Yeah, there was a lot of animosity towards them. Everybody knew what it was, but it was towards them because they were the ones out there with us.
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What do you think the future of the industry is?
I think the future is gone in that industry. It’s a dying industry; it really is because of the price of fuel, the imports—it’s killing them. You know the price of shrimp is killing them because of all the imports coming in, the price of fuel going up and the laws that the Federal government is pushing on them about these excluders and all. I have nothing against the turtles; nobody does. Nobody kills nothing out there, but it’s just—it’s just no future left in that industry. I don’t think so. The few guys I know that’s in it right now, that’s still in it, they’re struggling to make ends meet and they may not be in it too much longer themselves.
Not only them now; not only them now. Now the Vietnamese fishermen are fighting hard times too because they’re fighting it—they got to go by the same law as we do. They have to have the excluders; they don’t get the price for the shrimp that they did because of the imports. All the fishermen are suffering now and I know because I’ve been around the business and I’ve talked to these people that are still in it and they’re hurting really bad. And it’s about—it’s no future in that business anymore—not like the years I knew it was. It used to be great but it’s not like that anymore.
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I’m just saying this is a great area to be in and in years past, it used to be the seafood capital of the world and now it’s just getting to be one of the big casino capitals now. I mean I’m not blaming it on nobody; the money is good for everybody. There’s a lot of good jobs down here now. But the seafood industry is about gone. And I hate to see that go because that was my heritage—mine and many people down here, but there’s nothing we can do about it anymore. We have no control over that. It was an honest living; it really was an honest living. There’s one thing about it. You was an honest person doing a hard day’s work.
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