[StBernard] IN A PINCH

[Westley Annis]

IN A PINCH
Despite the odds, St. Bernard's crawfish festival flourishes again with the
parish's resilient spirit 
Sunday, April 01, 2007
By Karen Turni Bazile
St. Bernard/Plaquemines bureau 

Carolyn Rotolo Domingo will move back to her Hurricane Katrina-damaged home
in Meraux in about a month, but this weekend she's boiling 16,000 to 20,000
pounds of crawfish at the Louisiana Crawfish Festival -- a three-day spring
ritual in St. Bernard Parish that's back after a one-year hiatus. 

 
"Having the festival is important," Domingo said Saturday, standing next to
a boiling vat of mudbugs. 

"Anything that happens in St. Bernard is big, because people want to come
back but they are scared. So if they come to a festival or other functions
here and they see a lot of people, then they have more and more incentive to
think, 'OK, I'll put my house together and come back.' " 

Domingo, whose family owned several seafood businesses in St. Bernard and
eastern New Orleans before Katrina, opened a new B&J Seafood location in
Hammond after the storm, and she recently reopened B&J Seafood at its
pre-Katrina site in Arabi. 

Cisco Gonzales, grand knight of the Knights of Columbus Rummel Council 5747,
sponsor of the 31st annual Crawfish Festival, which ends today, said the
festival is a longstanding tradition and is just what locals need to boost
their sense of community. 

"We could have had it anywhere else, but we had to have it in St. Bernard,"
Gonzales said. "We want it to bring back a spirit for the road of recovery."


The event, which formerly drew 70,000 people a year, wasn't held in 2006.
The government complex where it had been held is now a maze of trailers
housing parish employees. 

This year's event, which saw pre-Katrina-size crowds on Friday and Saturday,
is in the parking lot of the old Wal-Mart store at 8333 W. Judge Perez Drive
in Chalmette. 

Gonzales said the organizers had to throw the festival together in eight
weeks because they weren't able to secure a new location until then that
could house 40 food and crafts booths and nearly 40 carnival rides, about 10
more rides than previous festivals. 

Everything came together quickly, Gonzales said, after fellow Knights of
Columbus member Robert Showalter, who owns the old Wal-Mart property with
state Sen. Walter Boasso, R-Arabi, and others, was able to work out
arrangements for the volunteer group to use the site for free. 

"It's amazing what a blessing it is that this has fallen in place, because
we planned in eight to 10 weeks what normally takes 10 months to plan," said
Gonzales, who owns a local heating and air-conditioning company and has
moved back to the area with his wife and three young children. 

The festival is a vital fundraiser for the Rummel Council, a charitable
group that has 100 members, down by two-thirds from before Katrina. The
event's proceeds are donated to charities such as Children's Hospital, the
Muscular Dystrophy Association and Special Olympics, and programs at local
schools. 

This year, 2,000 novelty license plates are being sold to benefit the parish
Recreation Department. 

Recreation Director John Metzler said he was grateful for the support and
called in young cheerleaders to hawk the plates, including Tiffany Tobin, 7,
who spent much of Saturday yelling through a megaphone to anyone who would
listen. 

She had buyers lined up to get a bit of memorabilia touting the festival's
theme: "The road to St. Bernard leads through the Louisiana Crawfish
Festival." 

Her mother, Cathy Tobin, who coaches the 120-member St. Bernard Dominators
cheerleading squad, said the festival and youth recreational activities are
all facets of the parish's recovery. 

Besides offering residents dispersed by the storm a sense of community, such
an event tells the world that the parish is back, said Tobin, a medical
technician who moved back to Arabi with her family. The home she shares with
her husband, daughter and in-laws had floodwater as high as 4 feet on the
second story. 

"You have volunteers here from everywhere who are going to see what this is
about," Tobin said. "They are going to go back to their hometowns and tell
people, 'You are not going to believe what they are doing in St. Bernard.
They lost everything, but they have an incredible spirit and are rebuilding
their community.' " 

Carrie Gagliano, director of the Crawfish Queen beauty pageant, agreed with
that sentiment. 

Even though the festival was not held last year, Gagliano said, a pageant
was held in Baton Rouge for continuity's sake and to keep promoting the
event statewide. As a result, a Louisiana Crawfish Festival queen and teen
queen criss-crossed the state for the past year, attending other festivals
and letting everyone know the St. Bernard festival would be back this year. 

Pete and Helen Drago, who lost everything in Slidell flooding and now live
in Covington, said they never miss the St. Bernard festival. 

Besides family pictures, the Dragos, 81 and 72, managed to save matching
crawfish outfits that they wear to all sorts of festivals they attend from
beginning to end, dancing often. 

St. Bernard "needed this, just like New Orleans needed Mardi Gras," Helen
Drago said. "People have to stop thinking about their problems and relax." 

The festival concludes today with music by Bruce Daigrepont from noon to 2
p.m., Paul Varisco from 3 to 6 p.m. and the Bucktown All-Stars from 7 to 10
p.m. 

. . . . . . . 

Karen Turni Bazile can be reached at kturni at timespicayune.com or (504)
826-3321.