Who would think driving pilings for docks, piers, boathouses and elevated houses would be fun?

David Lamulle thinks it’s a great life.

“I’ve done this my whole life, and I love it,” Lamulle said.

David Lamulle

For the past 32 years, Lamulle has been running Lamulle Construction, located at the corner of U.S. Highway 11 and Lakeview Drive, just south of Slidell.

He inherited the business from his father, Emile Joseph Lamulle, who started it in 1947.

Lemulle’s father started the pile driving business by accident. The elder Lemelle, an immigrant from France, had built a fishing camp along Lakeview Drive in the 30s. Emile Lamulle then built a house to replace the camp. However, a hurricane in 1947 blew away the house.

Fortunately, Emile had learned how to drive pilings while in the military serving in the Pacific theater during World War II. He started to drive in the pilings for a new house, when some neighbors came by and asked him to drive in pilings for the houses they wanted to rebuild. Lamulle Construction was born from that. Today, the company drives pilings for docks, houses and boathouses all the way from the Mississippi Gulf Coast to Madisonville in St. Tammany Parish and down in Orleans Parish.

David Lamulle was born in the new house. After he graduated from St. Paul’s School in Covington, his father gave him a choice: either go to college or start working for the company. For Lemulle the choice was easy. He had been operating a crane driving pilings since the age of 12, and he really liked the work.

“Working the crane was not by choice,” Lemulle said, laughing. “My dad would wake me up early and tell me it was time to work.”

After 32 years, Lemulle said the best thing about the work is meeting all the people and making friends with them.

“I made some of my best friends doing this,” Lemulle said. “There’s also a lot of fishing piers I can use.”

When asked what he considers the bad parts of his work, Lemulle pauses for a couple of seconds. “I really don’t know. Maybe it can be stressful at times,” he said. “I have very few bad memories in 32 years of work.”

Even Hurricane Katrina was not a bad experience for Lamulle. Yes, the storm surge lifted his childhood home off the pilings and floated it across the street. But Lamulle said his father had built it so well, it was pretty much in one piece. The family had to demolish it anyway, and a new house was built, higher and stronger. Now it is used as a fishing camp by Lamulle and his brother E.J., a retired military man who lives in Slidell.

Lamulle and his wife and children evacuated to Houston on Sunday before Katrina. It was the first time the Lamulles had evacuated. When he got to Houston, they heard the office had been destroyed and his home in Abita Springs had suffered some water damage. Lamulle and his son, John, loaded up a boat with food, water and gasoline and headed back to Slidell the following Tuesday. They stopped at two gas stations on Gause Boulevard, where people were desperate for food, water and gas.

The Lamulles started handing out what was in their boat. They also took telephone numbers of relatives of the people at the gas stations. They headed back to Houston, called the relatives and told them everyone was OK.

Then they and a cousin came back with a large refrigerator truck filled with supplies and passed those out to people.

He is very humble about his generosity.

“I really don’t like to talk about it a lot. I just want to keep a low profile,” Lamulle said.

Even so, a year and a half after Katrina, Lamulle was in a Slidell restaurant when his waitress offered him a free meal. She had been one of the recipients of Lamulle’s largesse after the hurricane.

“I like those good feelings,” he said. “That is what makes it so worthwhile.”

But it was still depressing for Lamulle to see everything on Lakeview Drive gone, including his boyhood home.

“I could see all the way to the I-10. It was a really eerie feeling,” Lamulle said.

The bright side was Katrina gave his company a lot of business. For the past three years, Lamulle Construction has been rebuilding docks, piers and boathouses. He said he has done this with a very low profit margin. The price of everything went up after the storm, but he didn’t feel right charging his neighbors post-Katrina prices.

“We don’t believe in scalping,” he said. His company took a big financial hit because all of his equipment, which was not insured, was washed away. The company lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in equipment.

Then along came Gustav and Ike in early September. Lamulle Construction was out of work for three weeks because officials moved all the equipment to higher ground, then waited for Ike to pass before bringing the equipment back to the office.

Lamulle is still optimistic about his business. He has a new line of work, elevating houses on pilings, and he has a lot of contracts for that.

He keeps busy, telling his eight work crews where to go, appeasing customers and doing the logistics with so much work. He said he would rather be out there driving pilings, but that isn’t feasible.

Instead, he keeps his hands busy with his hobby of building furniture.

Lamulle Construction will be in the area for a long time. Lamulle’s son, John, works for the company and will take over some day.

“We’re not going anywhere soon,” Lamulle said.