The river has kept drawing them back. JoAnn and Joe Toomy moved to a penthouse condominium on the Old Gretna riverfront three years ago, after spending 14 years in a penthouse condominium on the Algiers Riverfront.

Now they will never leave.

“My next home will be a marble mausoleum,” said JoAnn Toomy. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“My father moved us here from Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1950 to take a job operating a molasses terminal on the Mississippi River," said Joseph Toomy. “We settled in Gretna Garden Park, about 10 blocks from the terminal.”

JoAnn Toomy was raised blocks away on Huey P. Long Avenue.

A long history together

After years of friendship, the couple married 45 years ago after the tragic death of JoAnn Toomy’s first husband, leaving her widowed at age 31 with four young ch

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