Henry Armstrong and Dorothy Griffin Remembering Katrina

NICOLE EUGENE: Let me first start by asking both of y'all, where were you born? And I guess I'll start with you?

DOROTHY GRIFFIN: I was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, March the twenty-sixth, 1924.

HENRY ARMSTRONG, JR.: And I was also born in New Orleans, some time later, in 1946 in May.

EUGENE: So, can you tell me a little bit about what it was like growing up in New Orleans?

GRIFFIN: Well, it was nice. People were friendly and, you know, they shared and they cared about one another, you know. And everybody was—just to get together and be nice to one another, and stuff like that, you know, went to school, went to church and all. And I graduated from McDonogh 35, and I continued going to a Lutheran church and that's where I attended, back then I was attending—when Katrina came—so, but and I used to, on Wednesday I used to help serve food to the hungry once a month at Mount Zion Lutheran Church, and help them, you know, with other things around there if need be. You know. And, you know, I used to belong to a little Christmas savings club, and I would go out socially, you know, visit with friends. I could get around then. I wasn't using a walker or nothing like that. I had no problems, I had never been sick.

EUGENE: Can you tell me a little bit about your family?

GRIFFIN: My family? Oh, well my mother and my father, both of them died. My father died in 1960, my mother died in '82 and, you know, they were working—working parents—and they cared for us, my brother and I. And we had a small family, just the four of us and we got along well together, no problems. Had nice friends and everything.

EUGENE: And what about the family that you started?

GRIFFIN: Hum?

EUGENE: Can you talk about the family you started?

GRIFFIN: The family I started?

ARMSTRONG, JR.: Me and my daddy.

GRIFFIN: Yeah. Well, I married in '45 to Henry Armstrong, Sr. And he was nice. We had nice life together, you know, we stayed together for about seven—seven years. Uh huh, then we divorced and he went away and each time that he came here, to New Orleans, he would always come and see us—come see Henry [Jr.]. And all we shared, you know, I let him know what things he was in, things he was doing. I stayed with my parents and he moved to L.A.

EUGENE: Can you tell, Henry—can you talk a little bit about growing up in New Orleans?

ARMSTRONG, JR.: Oh yeah, I had a beautiful childhood. I grew up in the area called Sixth Ward, which is downtown, about eight blocks off Canal Street and we lived on Dumaine Street. It was a close-knitted neighborhood, everybody knew everybody; everybody looked out for everybody else's kids, you know, when we were running around it was like we were always under the eye of some parent, so that if we did anything wrong, that if anything bad happened, it didn't take long for news to get home.

I moved to L.A. to live with my dad, I went to school out there for a couple of years and I came back here to graduate—my mom wanted to see me graduate from high school. I was an above-average basketball player. My—I finally graduated and moved off back to L.A. and then I came back here to be with my mother and grandmother—my grandfather died in the early eighties—and I lived with them, my mother and grandmother. And, everything was smooth, especially as long as my grandmother was living. I could do no wrong. But as things would be, God took her away from us, and left me and my mother to fend for ourselves.

And so, I went about—I was a merchant seaman from, I guess from about 1970...