If he had died at a normal time, Larry Arthur Hammond would have had a funeral befitting a Zulu king, with more than a thousand mourners in the church and marching in second-line parades celebrating a mainstay of New Orleans Mardi Gras royalty.
Instead, only 10 people were allowed into the funeral parlor, his widow grieving from a socially distanced chair while family and friends strained to hear through cell phones on speaker mode. Hundreds of close-knit members of his century-old parade group and African American fraternity were prevented from honoring one of their leaders, weeks after he died of COVID-19.
