Notable New Orleanians: A Tricentennial Tribute

National Endowment for the Arts had selected him Master Traditional Artist in the Folk
Art Program.
Yet, Tootie and subsequent Big Chiefs never let the Indians become showcased objects of tourist
gawking. The various Indian tribes continued to parade on Mardi Gras day on meandering random
routes. They continue to follow a Spyboy who looks for suitable opportunities to show off the
tribe. The Spyboy then reports to the Flagboy who relays the information to the Chief, who then
decides to continue either left, right, or straight.
Professionally, Montana was a master lather and plasterer and member of a select community of
Creoles in the building trades. His proudest assignment was plastering the vast, uninterrupted interior
of the city’s first convention center on Poydras Street known as the Rivergate. He was saddened
when the building was demolished for a gambling casino. Tootie and and his wife Joyce made their
home on North Villere Street a center of non-stop sewing, designing, and visiting. As he aged,
Tootie named their son Darryl Montana to succeed his father as Chief of the Yellow Pocahontas.
Tootie died in 2005 while making an impassioned statement in the New Orleans City Council
chambers about police mistreatment of the city’s Mardi Gras Indians.
J EROME
G OLDMAN
(1924-2013)
Jerome Goldman.
COURTESY OF THE GOLDMAN FAMILY.
Maritime inventor Jerome Goldman’s innovations enhanced the port of New Orleans and permanently
influenced international trade. During the 1950s he developed the “all-hatch” concept
for freight ship design, a technique that led to the container ship. As Captain James
McNamara described Goldman’s two principal accomplishments, “The first… resulted in the
“all-hatch” design, which was embodied in Delta Line’s Del Rio-class vessels in 1960, and
later adopted in both American and European cargo ships. The technique of virtually opening
up the entire weather deck with hatchways has since been applied to today’s containership.”
1 The second was the Goldman-designed LASH (lighter aboard ship) vessel pioneered
by New Orleans-based Central Gulf Lines, headed by Niels W. and Erik F. Johnsen. In 1967,
they ordered the first LASH ship Acadia Forest, designed to facilitate the use of substantial
ships at river ports accessible to barge fleets, reducing loading and unloading times and permitting
access to shallower draft river ports.
A native of Illinois, Goldman graduated from the University of Michigan’s School of Naval
Architecture and Marine Engineering. He moved to New Orleans in 1944 to work for Andrew
Higgins (q.v.) Shipbuilding. Goldman soon formed his firm of Goldman and Friede through
which he accomplished his principal designs. In the 1950s he worked on the first jack-up rigs
and later on submersible and semisubmersible rigs. Going beyond maritime innovation,
Goldman also designed and built New Orleans’ high-rise Chevron office building. A second
development, the residential tower One River Place, became his home.
Goldman’s inventions soon made him a philanthropist for such institutions as the
University of Michigan, the University of New Orleans’ School of Naval Architecture, the
National World War II Museum, Temple Sinai, and the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra.
The four principal American Engineering Societies, Mechanical, Electrical, Naval, and Automotive
awarded him their prized national Elmer A. Sperry Award for distinguished contributions to transportation.
His universities of Michigan and New Orleans awarded him honorary doctorates and he
was later inducted into the Offshore Pioneers Hall of Fame. Goldman died in 2013 at the age of
89, leaving a wife and two daughters and seven grandchildren.
1 Captain James McNamara “Where Have the Barge Carriers Gone?” in American Shipper, May 2015.
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