A Family Business Beached

Nguyen shook his head. "Everything's gone."

LaBiche, hugging him, said: "I'm so sorry. You know I'll be with you all and help you out anyway I can." LaBiche's houseboat and three shrimping boats capsized in the storm.

"It's over for this year," Nguyen said of the shrimping season.

LaBiche nodded. "We gotta stick together," he said.

The Family

Even before Katrina, the Nguyen family had begun accepting the bleak future of the shrimping business. Two years ago, they opened a 49-room Days Inn in the town of Galliano, some 20 miles from the port where the Nguyens operate their shrimping business. The inn mainly houses workers from offshore oil rigs. And last month, the family opened a 64-room Best Western, whose only guests now are electricity workers coming to restore power to the bayou.

Nguyen and his brothers manage the hotel's books, while his son Vuong runs its day-to-day operations. Vuong, who worked on his father's shrimp boats as a deckhand for a few years after completing high school, said he has little interest in the shrimp business.

"It's not my thing," said Vuong, 29. "The three years I did it I didn't like it. I barely eat shrimp."

And he found shrimping hurt his dating life. "It's kind of hard to meet anybody in a shrimp shed," he said, laughing, although he did meet his fiancee after doing business with her father, a local shrimper. The couple has postponed a New Year's Eve wedding because they're helping their families get back on their feet after the hurricane.

Out of loyalty, many in the Nguyen family feel pressure to follow Ngo, the eldest, into the shrimping business. But the younger generation, those who are teenagers, know little of that work. And those in their 20s and 30s, who were born in the United States and spent summers and weekends working in the shrimping business, find themselves at a crossroads.

Nguyen's two sons, Vuong and Vu, have already chosen a different path. Vu, 35, has five children and mainly works as an electrician on the bayou. Meanwhile, Vuong has devoted himself to the hotels. He takes great pride in designing the hotel rooms, with their marble bathroom countertops, curved shower rods and fancy showerheads that go in six directions.

The hotels have become critical for the Nguyens in the aftermath of the hurricane. Ngo Van Nguyen has taken in sisters, brothers, cousins and their children who had scattered to escape Katrina's wrath. Some lost their houseboats and shrimping boats, and all are staying at the Days Inn. Both hotels suffered some flooding and roof damage, but at least at the Days Inn no windows were broken.

Nguyen's wife said five families emptied their cabinets, refrigerators and freezers, bringing chicken, beef, noodles, lettuce, celery, guava and about 800 pounds of rice to the hotel. They set up a makeshift kitchen in the hotel conference room using Bunsen burner stoves.

"Anytime there's a crisis we try to bond together," said Vuong. "Your family will be there for you. No one will take care of you except for your family."

Even so, Nguyen and his relatives have offered help to many beyond their own family, opening the hotel to the community and serving 400 plates of boiled shrimp to passersby from the bayou area. When they ran out of plates, they used paper bags.

The Nguyens said they are unsure when their shrimping boats -- mostly missing or scattered along the coastline -- will be ready for work again. Yet, in spite of his losses, Nguyen is grateful that his family members survived the storm and that none are missing. And only a few shingles are missing from his two-year-old brick house in Cut Off, a small town near the port.

"Every day we try to smile," Nguyen said. "Everything's over and God saved my life. We can do something. God gave to us and God taketh from us."