When Barbara and Les Picard call themselves “island people,” they don’t mean to imply that they are natives of Grand Isle. It means they love all islands, whether in the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, or the Gulf of Mexico.
But their favorite island is Grand Isle.
“My family has had a camp on Grand Isle since 1938,” Barbara said. “We used to have to wait in the car for the cattle and horses to get off the road, both up the bayou and on the island. The road coming down — Highway 1 — was gravel. It was terrible.
“It was quiet, then. There were many fewer camps and no water supply. We had to catch rain water in our cistern, and an ice man used to deliver ice for the ice box. By 13 years old I knew everybody on the island.”
The comely, green-eyed charmer explained that she has always loved to fish.
“I started fishing with my father, Kermit Wurzlow, when I was a little girl,” Barbara said. “I was the firstborn, and we always had a boat. I would crab in Robinson Canal south of Houma while (Wurzlow) worked on the boat in the shed on the canal. The fish were so prolific. Oh my gosh — they were everywhere. We caught so many more in those days. There were no limits, and we could catch all we wanted.
“My mother would come down to the island with us when school let out and stay all summer. Dad would come down on weekends.”
That tradition is still alive with Les and Barbara.
“I still come down to the island about the time that school lets out, and I stay on the island,” she said with a laugh. “I go back to Houma about Labor Day. The whole summer, I might go home twice a month — and only for one day.
“Les stays in Houma all week and comes to Grand Isle on the weekends.”
Les, a very active septuagenarian, is officially retired, but he works almost full time as a consulting mechanical engineer.
“I tried completely retiring,” he chucked, “but I just haven’t gotten to a place where I feel that I’m not contributing anymore.”
Their home in Houma is stuffed with collections of glass, art, fabrics, pottery (mostly old) and furniture. It’s like a high-end museum with a marine theme.
Their camp is similarly decorated, and its collections reflect the couple’s travels.
They have traveled widely, following Les’s engineering work as well as pleasure-trips with friends Fred and Roxanne Blossman of Covington in their 48-foot catamaran, Second Wind.
Destinations included Greece, French Polynesia, the Windward Islands, the Leeward Islands, the Bahamas, the Virgin Islands, Cuba, South Africa and the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean.
Les reminisced about his wife’s fishing addiction.
“For years, she would go surf fishing in the morning at the drop of a hat. She would meet lady friends on the beach, and they would keep track of each other. ‘What are you catching? What are you catching them with?’ That sort of stuff.”
“Ahhh,” Barbara said at Les’s mention of surf fishing.
“She’s slowed down on that,” Les went on, “but now fishes from a boat a lot. Any time conditions are good, we go fishing. She charters a couple of times a year with lady friends.
“Barbara participates in the annual Grand Isle Ladies Fishing Rodeo. I get to run the boat for her and her friends, but I can’t fish. One year Barbara and her two sisters — Robin Bourgeois and Jeannie Domingue — were on the boat, each with a friend. I was almost overloaded landing big redfish.
“There was a costume contest associated with that, and Barbara made the costumes.
Barbara joined in pulling up memories.
“Nat Chighizola (a direct descendent of one of the Lafitte pirates and a local legend) was my dad’s camp caretaker,” she reminisced. “He was such a character. He would take us fishing at Independence Island. We would float a truck-tire inner tube with a No. 3 washtub stuck in it when we fished. We could fill it in 30 minutes. By the time I was 14, we kids had our own boat.
“With my brother and another camp owner’s son, we would fish all day. We went through some electrical storms that were frightening. My mother would pray for us and hang a rosary on the clothes line. It’s an old Catholic tradition that when you wanted the weather to be good for a wedding or something else you would hang a rosary.”
Nothing seems to slow this energetic woman down.
“I can still back a boat trailer, and I can operate a boat,” Barbara said almost defiantly, while pulling her long, streaming silver hair over one shoulder.
It’s not by accident that the Picard camp is named The Barbara Coast and their boat is the Island Girl.
