Mr. Leroy and the French Club

I pulled up to their imposing meeting hall, a dead ringer for an airplane hangar, with nerves firing and walked in to find… a couple of guys watching SportsCenter at a bar. I met Mr. Leon, Mr. Ben, Mr. Tee, friendly men in Hawaiian shirts and pleated jeans who pulled up a chair for me and chatted the way uncles do. Leroy Duvall, the club’s president, came over and shook my hand, a slight, taut man with a head of white and skin that’s been in the sun his whole life. He apologized for the ruckus as I set up the recording gear. It was a big day. Three years after Katrina took their home they’d just gotten into their new building, and the first thing he did was call in a beer order, now clanging in on handtrucks and dollies.

75 years ago, Cajun fishermen looking for work moved into Biloxi from Louisiana. In a strange town far from home, they settled into a tight-knit community in East Biloxi. They founded the French Club, as everyone called it, as a place to have dinners and dances together, and occasionally raise some money for members in bad shape.

I asked whether the Club tries to preserve French culture. Mr. Leroy nodded, talking about the dances they put on, but then said, “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.” There wasn’t a trace of irony in his voice when he referred to himself as one of the younger people, despite his 64 years.

Mr. Leroy worked on shrimp boats for most of his life. He misses it. “No traffic jams,” he said to me. “No 9:00 to 5:00. You just worked. But it was just the pleasure of being out there; the freedom and the good fresh air.” It’s demanding work, physical work, but I imagine of the kind that makes your body still feel young at 64 if it didn’t make you feel old at 32.

But the realities of age still stand. I asked him why the club only has 300 members now, instead of the 600 it used to have. “The older people got older,” he said. “East Biloxi started dying away. And then Katrina finished it off by taking everything out. A lot of the older people are too old to try to come back down here and start over.”

I asked if he keeps in touch with his displaced members. “That’s one reason we put the club back down here,” he said. “After Katrina took our building away there was no consideration about going anyplace else. Our people—no matter where they’re at—they know whenever they come back, the French Club is still here. A lot of our members passed away; we have a lot of older people. Every day we see them they ask when we’re going to open. They want to come back and we’re trying to get it back. For the people.”

Behind us, men loaded the new coolers with beers and Cokes and Barq’s Root Beer.

I’ve come back a few times since hoping to catch the Club in action, but every time I drive by, it’s just Mr. Leroy’s old pickup in the parking lot. I poke my head in the dark hall. It’s an awfully big room for one man to be in. I say hello, he smiles warmly, counting change or taking out the trash. He tells me, every time, that I just missed everyone, that I should come by for dinner. We chat, I thank him, and leave him to his chores.

But today, I walk into the French Club and my eyes need a few minutes to adjust to the darkness from the Mississippi sun. When I can see again, the tables are crowded with people piling high the spent bodies of crawfish. The aisles are crowded with couples dancing to Cajun music played by a man with a Croatian name. I can barely make my way through the crowd, taking pictures to go with my interview, and looking for Mr. Leroy. When I finally find him, my photos all taken, he asks, “Did you get any crawfish?” I regretted saying that I had to go. “Well,” he says. “You’re welcome here anytime. You know that, don’t you?”

I smiled back at him. “Yes I do, Mr. Leroy. Yes, I do.”