May/June 2012 Cover by Dr. Bob.

The first clues that Dr. Bob might have a northshore connection are warning signs featuring the Honey Island Swamp Monster (As Seen on TV) and the wild-eyed albino, Onion Head (Bonfouca Boogie Man), greeting visitors in the studio’s parking lot. So what exactly does an iconic “New Orleans” artist like Dr. Bob know about the mysterious waterways of Slidell? It turns out he knows quite a bit.

Born in Wichita, Kan., Dr. Bob is of Crow Indian, French and German descent. His dad was an engineer for aerospace manufacturing giant Boeing Co. The family was among the first wave of “come here” high-tech workers (“missile gypsies,” as Dr. Bob calls his family) who settled in the Slidell area after Boeing won the contract to build the first stage of NASA’s Saturn V moon rocket at the Michoud plant in New Orleans East.

Coming of age at the dawn of suburban development in St. Tammany meant endless adventure to Dr. Bob. “To a kid from Kansas, it was like being in Jurassic Park down here. Every where you turned, something moved, slithered, splashed, jumped or growled,” he remembers. “I started out discovering the secrets of the South, so to speak—all these opportunities to go fishing and hunting. Walking out your front door with a dip net and a flashlight or a frog gig made out of a nail and a broom handle—man, you could catch whatever you wanted to.”

Listen to Dr. Bob recounting his mischievous, if not misspent, youth spent in St. Tammany and it quickly becomes obvious that his time spent exploring the parish’s streams, woods and swamps has greatly shaped his art as much as his subsequent adventures later in life in New Orleans and throughout the South.

Dr. Bob poses with his wire sculpture of Tammanend.

Dr. Bob’s storytelling intersects modern pop culture and the places that “ain’t dere no more” when he explains why he thinks he knows what’s behind the recent sightings of the northshore panther. “We had a neighbor, Arthur Jones, who later on invented Nautilus fitness machines. He owned a snake farm by the old White Kitchen on the road to the Gulf Coast. [Reptile Jungle, where Highways 90 and 190 meet.] That’s where Jayne Mansfield was killed when her driver ran into the back of a truck. We were at Bosco’s Restaurant in Slidell when we heard that. They took her car to Eddie’s Esso in Slidell. I saw that,” he digresses, then gets back on track with the panther. “Mr. Jones kept wild animals and snakes in his home, too. He had a pair of breeding jaguarundis that he kept in a bathtub with a sliding glass door he kept jammed up with a broom handle so you couldn’t slide it.”

Intrigued about the northshore panther reports, Dr. Bob did some research. “The climate is just the same as in Central America, and they describe jaguarundis as cocoa-colored—and they are blackish-looking—and I’m getting tickled over all this.” He brought it up in a visit with his friend, musician Coco Robicheaux, who died last November. (Robicheaux became known nationwide in 2010 for performing a bit of voodoo on the HBO show Treme.) “He was raised in Slidell and his real name was Curtis Arceneaux. Curtis and I used to catch snakes and lizards to sell to Mr. Arthur to feed his snakes and reptiles and stuff. We’d get a dollar for a turtle. That’s big money in the ’60s. Before he died, Curtis and I got to talking about Arthur Jones, who moved from the middle of Slidell to Palm Lake subdivision. Did those cats get away from the old White Kitchen? Or in the move? Or when Camille passed Slidell? Somehow, people are seeing these things and I truly believe it could be those jaguarundis.”

Dr. Bob's northshore icons.

What about Onion Head, the Boogie Man of the Bonfouca? Turns out tales of the mythological monster were made up to scare the youth of Slidell, tales equally believed as tales of the Loup Garou are by the children of Acadiana.

To paraphrase Dr. Bob and make the tale fit for print in a family magazine, he says it all became too real one evening as he and a young lady were “necking” out by Bayou Pacquet. “We were in my daddy’s ’67 Impala and a pine cone fell and hit the roof. BAM! That was the end of that.” The girl (who will remain nameless) screamed, ‘Onion Head! Get the hell out!’ And when she screamed, you see three more cars’ lights pop on and everybody’s hauling ass out of Bayou Pacquet ’cause Onion Head’s coming.”

Dr. Bob’s Art

Dr. Bob is self-taught. The first piece of art that he made and sold was as much a product of the boredom he faced in an early stint as a forest ranger in northern Louisiana as any big creative urge. “There was nothing else to do with no cable and only two TV stations. The Album Hour out of Natchez was the first time anybody heard Lynyrd Skynyrd, so we’re out there turning the antenna up on the hill trying to tape it on a cassette player. We wanted some rock ‘n’ roll, living up in the boonies.”

Mr. Okra.

Going back to his days in the swamps, he carved an alligator. But it wasn’t just a wooden gator. It was a musical instrument. A “ga-tar.” “I can’t play, I can’t sing and I was told I couldn’t carry a tune in a No. 3 washtub, so I made a washtub base. I wanted the neckpiece to be like snakes.” With an alligator’s head carved into the end, he says, “I put the eyes and the teeth in it. It’s the ga-tar, boys! Play one string at a time.” When he unveiled it, he says, “Everyone laughed. It turned into my first piece of art and sold to a New York collector. Last time it changed hands was 15 years ago for $5,000, and it’s in a private collection in New Jersey now. ”

Dr. Bob has since carved two more of these alligators in a labor- and time-intensive process. It takes hours and hours of sanding, he says, and adds that, “Once I get through with the sanding, I do the steel wool and get that down to 0000, which is really fine. After getting the wax on, it’s like butter.” The carved gators serve as demonstration pieces at art shows, where Dr. Bob shows off their finish. “I like to take a rag and just throw it and it slides down the gator, it’s so slick. I take a lot of pride in making it. It’s dangerous. A piece can go wrong after you spent months on it, bust it all to hell.”

He uses real alligator teeth in the alligator and dog pieces. “I get the eyes from anywhere that deals with glass or marbles; the guys at Studio Inferno around the corner are good at keeping me supplied. I buy my alligator teeth by the pound. People ask how I get ’em. I say, ‘Very carefully.’”

Found objects are the basis for much of his art. In an ironic twist, the storm that nearly killed him has ensured a steady supply of discarded signs, lumber, doors and window frames to forage in the decimated areas around his studio. “After the hurricane, I scoured the neighborhoods for what little bit of old New Orleans was left.”

Many of the bottle caps that he uses to bejewel his creations come from the Abita Brewery. He also has a stash of Barq’s root beer bottle caps and wood from the old Barq’s crates with the slogan “Drink Barq’s—it’s good!” stenciled on the sides. Dr. Bob recalls the old Conti St. warehouse. “It smelled intoxicating; that raw sassafras and birch just permeated that building. To this day, you walk in there and it knocks you over.

“The things that mean the most to me are things that come to me by magic,” Dr. Bob says. He has two rescued Union Beer signs from one of New Orleans’ first commercial breweries that are waiting to become part of some artwork, and, he says, “One of the only Dr. Nut signs in existence. It was on the gable-end of a building.” Dr. Nut, a local soft drink that ceased existence in the 1970s, is etched in literary history as the favorite beverage of Ignatius Riley in Confederacy of Dunces. Dr. Bob has cut an alligator-shaped portion out of the sign and, after adding eyes and teeth, will incorporate it into a piece assembled in tribute to the character. “I was thinking, I’ve got Ignatius done, and I want to make up some Dr. Nut bottle caps if I can’t find them online. I have to get the right eyeball to put on him to keep an eye on Ignatius.”

Be Nice or Leave

Even Dr. Bob’s catch phrase, “Be Nice or Leave,” has a back-swamp back-story. It started when Dr. Bob and some of his fellow St. Paul’s students took to the river to do some fishing on a holiday.

“We’d get a six-pack of Dixie, a pack of Marlboros and go out and act like we’re 14-year-old men. I drew the short straw, so I had to go get the beer,” says Dr. Bob. A Pearl River dive bar behind the St. Joe brick works was where the underage artist-to-be entered to buy the day’s “refreshments.”

“It was called Working Man’s Paradise, owned by a man named Edgar Ducre; it was painted red with black and white dice on the building and spelled ‘paradise’ for ‘pair of dice.’ It just intrigued me.” The scene inside the bar made an even bigger impact on Dr. Bob. “The interior was painted this turquoise blue that makes you feel like you’re in Haiti or something. On one wall was this big painting of Edgar Ducre’s son who went to LSU. He’s in his uniform riding Mike the Tiger and throwing a football. It’s awesome; it’s painted really good.”

Then he says, “That’s where I saw ‘Be Nice or Leave.’ It was written with a Marks-A-Lot on a piece of a cardboard beer box. When I got my order and turned to leave, the back of the sign said, ‘There’s Nothing in the World Worth Getting Killed Over.’ It hit me that I didn’t belong there, that I could get killed.”

His Be Nice or Leave signs can be found hanging all over the city, and he’s constantly commissioned to make signs with a personalized spin on the phrase. He has his own versions on sale as well. Be Nasty and Stay, Shut Up and Fish and Shut up and Eat are variations, and he paints Be Nice or Be Bitten signs that he donates to local animal shelters for them to give to donors and people adopting pets.

Dr. Freakin’ Bob

How did Dr. Bob, a man of no obvious medical training, get the name Dr. Bob? He’ll be happy to tell you. It was at the birth of the S.O.B.—the son of Bob, his boy Isaac. “My nickname came when I was helping deliver him at Lakeside Women’s Hospital. Lamaze failed, and we had to do an emergency C-section. I was in the sterile field, so I assisted with it. The nurse, Margie Vanderbeck, who I went to school with, said ‘Well, doctor freakin’ Bob,’ and that was it.”

Dr. Bob participates in many charitable endeavors in the New Orleans area and Bay St. Louis, where the first gallery to carry his work is located, and in Memphis and Washington, D.C. When Mr. Okra, a beloved New Orleans’ roaming vegetable vendor, needed a new truck, neighbors and businessmen rallied to help, as Mr. Okra had become a necessity in Katrina-ravaged neighborhoods after so many local grocery stores had closed. Dr. Bob helped organize the benefit and provided the decorative painting for the new truck. “My piece-de-resistance,” he says.

His work is now found in many private collections and museums throughout the South. Dr. Bob is a regular participant in the Kentuck Festival of the Arts in Tuscaloosa, Ala. A piece was featured in the Smithsonian Magazine in 1999; the Smithsonian’s affiliate, the Memphis Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum, also includes one of his pieces in its collection.

“I did it! I used to tell my friends, ‘Screw you, I’m going to be in the Smithsonian, and then I’m going into the Louvre!’” he says, with only one more internationally-known institution to go.

Dr. Bob’s work can be found at drbobart.net.

Louisiana Roots

The house was once home to the New Orleans branch of French artist Degas’ family, the Mussons, one of the most well regarded of New Orleans’ Creole families. (While “Creole” has taken on many meanings, here it refers to descendants of French or Spanish colonial subjects born in the Americas.)

Degas’ mother, Célestine Musson, and her brother Michel were born in New Orleans but were sent to France to be educated when young. Célestine married Auguste De Gas and remained in France, while Michel returned to New Orleans after completing his studies. (Auguste changed their name from Degas to De Gas, but Edgar re-adopted “Degas” later in life).

Detail of Degas' "Woman Seated on a Balcony," portrait of Mathilde Bell.

Michel became a very wealthy cotton and silver merchant in the 1820s. As a businessman, he had dealt favorably with both the old Creole guard and the American businessmen who had begun arriving in the city after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. He had even built a grand home in the Garden District, or, as it was known, “the American Sector,” one of the first Creoles to do so.

During the Yankee occupation of New Orleans in the Civil War, Michel sent his wife, Odile, and daughters Désirée and Estelle to France, where they got to know their cousin Edgar and his brothers René and Achille.

While Edgar completed some portraits of his aunt and cousins during their time in France, his brother René was falling in love with Estelle. René writes at one point, “She inspires so much sympathy, she has so much sweetness in her sadness that she made us all become attached to her in an instant.” He and Achille leave France to find their fortunes in Louisiana once the war is over, and, in a move that would be shocking today but wasn’t uncommon then, René and Estelle become husband and wife.

René and Achille formed their own import/export firm in New Orleans and joined Michel’s cotton factoring operation. Factors were commissioned agents working in the city who handled the business end of buying, selling and exporting cotton for the rural growers and plantation owners who were spread throughout the region.

Michel’s fortunes went into steady decline after the war. He had gone “all in” for the South and invested heavily in Confederate war bonds, which, of course, were worthless after the war. He sold his Garden District home and moved the family into the rented mansion on Esplanade in 1869.

Rendered by architectural artist Adrian Persac shortly after it was built in 1858, the home on Esplanade Avenue appears as a large, stately, well-landscaped mansion occupying the river-side end of the block, taking up, as the formal description states, “two fine lots of ground.” A wing is attached to its side; there are a couple of detached buildings alongside the property and a pigeonnier in the garden to the rear of the house.

The state of the Musson family fortune made life in the home more like a bunkhouse than a mansion. Upwards of 16 people lived there, at least six of them energetic kids, with the parlors partitioned off and serving as bedrooms for the unmarried adults; the married couples and children were in the bedrooms upstairs.

“Louisiana must be respected by all her children … and I am almost one of them.”
—Edgar Degas

René Degas traveled to France in 1872 to buy costumes for the next year’s Comus Mardi Gras proceedings. (The secretive organization’s 1873 ball and procession became perhaps the most famous of all time, with the theme “Darwin’s Origin of Species” providing cover for the satiric skewering of the Union conquerors, carpetbaggers and reconstructionists who ruled Louisiana at the time.) His mission on behalf of the Mistick Krewe completed, René convinced Edgar to come back with him to New Orleans for a visit.

While his works now fetch millions of dollars on the open market, Degas was struggling for recognition in the formal salons of Paris, and, like the Mussons, he was at a difficult point in his life when he came to visit in the fall of 1872.

The Degas House on Esplanade Avenue.

David Villarrubia, who has owned the Degas House since 1993 and has endeavored to restore it to its Creole roots, has spent years researching Degas’ life. He explains, “Degas is 38, just out of the Franco-Prussian War and just got kicked to the curb by his girlfriend. He’s hurting, he’s down, he lost his best friend in battle and he realizes he’s going blind—that’s a hell of a thing for a painter who is not really famous. He’s a little bit popular in Paris, but he’s not the Degas we’ve come to know.”

Degas’ eyes gave him fits in New Orleans. While fascinated with the scenery and diversity of possible subjects on the riverfront and in and around the market’s stalls, the glare hurt his eyes too much for him to spend enough time to make any drawings.

“One does nothing here, it lies in the climate, nothing but cotton, one lives for cotton and from cotton. The light is so strong that I have not yet been able to do anything on the river. My eyes are so greatly in need of care that I scarcely take any risk with them at all. A few family portraits will be the sum total of all my efforts,” Degas writes.

Despite his complaints, Villarrubia notes, “New Orleans was a very pivotal point in time for his art. He does re-group here. He’s with family. His letters explain a tremendous amount of what he was going through when he arrives here. He hadn’t been painting, so he starts painting again.”

Degas does get to paint some family portraits and manages to incorporate life’s great topic, cotton, into a couple of paintings that will make him famous. “What he accomplishes while he’s here is pretty amazing,” says Villarrubia. Regarded as one of Degas’ most cherished masterworks is an unlikely family portrait that appears to be an observational picture of some men at work in an office. “Portraits in an Office at the New Orleans Cotton Exchange—which was done on Factor’s Row, not the Cotton Exchange—is 14 people, and they’re recognizable. You could hold a photograph up and we know who they were,” says Villarrubia. “His brothers René and Achille, cousin-in-law William Bell, Oscar Chopin and his uncle’s business partners, all included in this fantastic painting of his uncle’s cotton office, which is going defunct.”

Degas’ painting Children on a Doorstep depicts several of Degas’ young cousins and nieces and nephews, along with one of the household’s nurses, framed in a doorway leading out to the back garden, the family dog in the garden and a neighbor’s home in the background.

There are 18 paintings in all attributed to Degas’ time in New Orleans. His cousins Estelle and Mathilde are certainly subjects. He didn’t always identify his subjects or state whether their depictions were to be portraiture or used as models to which he applied his own spin on a figurative work. It’s been the job of experts to speculate who may or may not be the person depicted in some of his New Orleans portraits. While some are definitely of Estelle, and at least one definitely Mathilde, there is no consensus whether unmarried cousin Désirée is in any of the paintings.

Tragedies

“Ah! my friend, how I have also wept—even though at my age, and given how much I have already wept, the stream is nearly dried up.”
—letter from Michel Musson to Edgar Degas, 1883.

Michel Musson, Degas’ uncle and paterfamilias of the New Orleans branch of the family, continued to suffer misfortune after misfortune in the years after Edgar returned to Paris in 1873.

Musson corresponded with Edgar for years, with no success, in an attempt to have him send to New Orleans the portrait of his daughter Mathilde, probably the painting now known as Woman Seated Near a Balcony. (The piece is now in the collection of the Ordrupgaard Museum in Copenhagen, Denmark, as is Children on a Doorstep.)

In 1878, Edgar’s brother, René, had an affair and then ran off with America Olivier. She was the children’s music teacher and had been hired to read to Estelle, who was by then blind. The Oliviers were close friends of the family. In a legacy made permanent through Edgar’s art, America Olivier had also been the lady of the house that is seen in the background of his painting Children on a Doorstep.

“America was married, they took her children with them and got ‘quickie’ divorces and ‘quickie’ married, and they were off to France. He had left Estelle blind, with six children, so nobody was very happy with him,” says Joan Prados, a tour guide at the Degas House and a descendant of Estelle Musson and René Degas. One of their children was Prados’ grandfather, Gaston Degas, who was the godson of the Oliviers. In the coming years, four of Estelle’s children with René died. Michel adopted the two surviving children, Gaston and Odile, replacing the now-despised Degas name with his own.

By the time Michel Musson died in 1885, he had also seen the death of his daughter Mathilde, Josephine Balfour (Estelle’s daughter from her first marriage) and his brother, Henri.

Adrien Persac's painting of the Degas House from the 1850s.

The Degas family was not without difficulties. In France, Degas’ father dies, leaving him to deal with the family’s bank that had failed, in no small part, due to investments in the Confederacy made at the behest of Michel. It didn’t help that René had lost thousands of dollars of the bank’s money in a series of unsuccessful business dealings prior to his abandoning Estelle for America Olivier.

“It took Degas about 10 years to pay off the bank’s debt, and he did it by painting ballet pictures, for the most part,” Prados says. “That’s one reason he became known as a painter of artists and dancers over anything else. They say about half of his work was dancers, so he did a lot of other things people don’t know him for.”

Restoration

Villarrubia grew up in the neighborhood and was familiar with the home on Esplanade and its historic marker, which had been placed in the ’70s, but didn’t know a whole lot more. As an airline pilot, he had spent time in Europe enjoying art museums, including the Monet House in Giverny, France. In 1993, he took a break from flying due to illness in his family. Villarrubia recalls that one day, “I passed the house and it had a ‘For Sale by Owner’ sign. I called a friend of mine who was in real estate to come see the house with me.

“I was curious about where Degas had painted. Having traveled a lot in Europe, I knew that if this were in Europe, it would be a museum house. So we came through the house, and the owner didn’t know anything about Degas, except to say the name on the marker was ‘Dee-gas,’ who’s actually in the encyclopedia.

Degas' "Children on a Doorstep" depicts the rear of the Degas House.

“The house was in terrible shape. It had been remodeled with drop ceilings added, and there was termite damage throughout. “The architectural detailing was there; it was just hidden. The ceilings had been lowered; they were acoustical tile and really had not been done well,” Villarrubia remembers. Concerned that the home was to be featured in the next day’s real estate section of the paper, he asked his friend to make an offer on the house right away.

“We got a contract late that night and started this adventure.” Villarrubia says he wasn’t sure what he was going to do with it; he just knew that he didn’t want the property to keep going in the direction it had been going. It was a favorable price because the owners were looking to dump it, not knowing exactly what they had. He didn’t necessarily intend to keep and restore the house himself, just to preserve it until the right person came along. “I didn’t think it would be my adventure. I thought the museum would be interested, or the City of New Orleans, but nobody really understood.”

His adventure, it turns out, involved even more research about the painter and his family, a quest to solve an architectural mystery and a lot of hard work.

What researchers believed was that the house with the historical marker in front of it (the second house from the corner of N. Tonti and Esplanade) had an additional wing during Degas’ time that had since been demolished. Villarrubia had a revelation of sorts when he went to talk to his neighbor across the street. She told him, “Well, they write their books and their newspaper articles about the house, but they never ask for my perspective.”

“I was patronizing her,” Villarrubia says, “thinking she was probably lonely, so I asked, ‘What is your perspective?’ She said to get up on the stoop and she would show me. I got up there, she turned me around and faced me towards house on the corner and the one with the marker, and she said, ‘Look at the roof lines. That wing wasn’t destroyed, it was just moved.’”

He remembers, “It hit me like a train, because I could see it. The guillotine windows were still in the front behind glass jalousies and yellow brick that had been used to modernize the building.”

Villarrubia dug deep into the property’s history and found that after the Mussons moved out in 1880, the home became the Markey-Picard Institute for Girls, a young ladies’ finishing school, until 1917, when Madame Picard died. Her succession wasn’t complete, he says, until 1920, when her heirs sold it to a developer, who split the property into six different lots of ground.

“The dividing line for lots one and two went through the parlor. So they simply moved it and re-did it as a more modern house. They got rid of the high doorways and enclosed the parlor into several apartments. It became a six-plex.” The house was cut in two at the left side of the doorway in the center of the house and both sides moved to the centers of their newly defined lots. The wing that had been on the side was moved and attached to the rear of the main section.

Degas' "Portrait of Estelle." Courtesy the New Orleans Museum of Art.

Villarrubia has restored the house that was traditionally believed to be the Degas House into an elegant and formal space in a manner as close as possible to its appearance during Degas’ visit. The bedrooms upstairs have been converted into charming rooms and suites that form part of the home’s latest incarnation—it is now a bed and breakfast.

He acquired the corner property as well, which had undergone several additions and modernized touches over the years, rendering it, as he explained earlier, almost unrecognizable as part of the same home. “It’s the second project we’ve taken on, never to be as formal as the other. We don’t want to Disney-fy this one and make them matching twins. We use this more for the offices of our non-profit and for the tours. People who come for tours see this more as the museum and classroom side, and over there it’s more elegant and finished.”

Joan Prados points out that the door itself where the children were standing in Children on a Doorstep is now part of the wing that had been added to the main house when the property was divided. It still looks out to the back courtyard, which, at the time it was painted, was a garden that extended completely across the block to the next street. The home in the background was where the Mussons’ close friends, the Oliviers, lived. It still stands on N. Tonti; today, however, there are several other houses between it and the Degas House.

Ghosts of Residents Past

Villarrubia says the property is not an art museum and he doesn’t ever intend it to be one. It is home, however, to quality reproductions of the paintings attributed to Degas during his time spent there. He says, “Our focus is history. The reproductions are there as a backdrop to the history and the stories that we tell. You get a sense of how beautiful these paintings are without traveling the rest of the world; they’re in the context of where they were actually painted.”

Traces remain, like the doorway where the children once stood and Degas painted them. In the background of Mathilde’s portrait on the balcony is the sketchy shadow—an impression—of the iron railing that still rings the balcony today. A print of a painting of a pregnant Estelle, sitting on a daybed, her blind eyes fixed on nothing, stands on an easel under the main stairway. A print of The Song Rehearsal, a painting that depicts a man resembling his brother René at a piano with two ladies singing, hangs in the front parlor. “The picture,” Prados says, “was done in this room. It doesn’t have all the features of the room, but Degas says, ‘painting is not copying.’ You have René playing piano. Degas put the pocket doors on a different side, and then he changes it into a single door.”

A reproduction of the portrait of Estelle, the largest of his New Orleans works, hangs over the fireplace in the center room. Depicting a pregnant Estelle arranging a vase of flowers, it is, for the city of New Orleans and, it turns out, the Degas House itself, the most important of all. Portrait of Mme René De Gas, née Estelle Musson now resides in the New Orleans Museum of Art. How it became a cornerstone of the collection is a great story that in no small measure inspired Villarrubia to become the steward of the home where it was painted, just a few blocks away from the museum.

“In 1965, the then Delgado Museum [New Orleans Museum of Art] was empty. They had to lure people from the Quarter to an empty museum. The director at the time, James Byrnes, took on the challenge of putting something in the museum done by the most famous painter that ever lived in New Orleans, Edgar Degas. He found a painting on the market, the portrait of Estelle, went on a public campaign to raise enough funds to buy it and was able to do that through a campaign called ‘Bring Estelle Home.’ As a campaign, it involved every layer of society. The city put up some money, corporations put up some money, Junior League, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, bake sales at schools, everybody participated. On the final day, he was $5,000 short. He went back on radio and TV making a further appeal. Late into the night, he got a call from an anonymous donor who put up the money so they would not have to re-crate the painting and send it back to London.”

With the restoration of the Degas House and the success of the campaign to “Bring Estelle Home,” the historic connection between New Orleans and Edgar Degas—one of Louisiana’s “almost” children—is perpetuated for generations to come.

The Southern Hotel soon after it was completed. Photo courtesy Rusty Burns.

The hotel was built in 1907 during the glory days of the “Ozone Belt,” when the area enjoyed immense popularity as a resort. The cool air flowing out of the piney woods was welcome in the days before air conditioning, and area waters, whether from springs or deep wells, were reputed to be medicinal. The Southern Hotel and others on the northshore thus attracted guests from all over the country.

Lisa Condrey Ward purchased the Southern Hotel along with her husband, Joseph, her brother Ricky Condrey and his wife, Gayle, in 2011. She is familiar with its history, noting, “It catered to northerners during the winter and New Orleanians during the summer.” They purchased the building last November, but it had been on her mind since she first saw it. “We moved here from New Orleans in 1999. I started talking about it, probably the day after we moved here, ‘Gosh, why hasn’t somebody turned that back into a hotel?’”

The Southern Hotel. Photo courtesy Rusty Burns.

Their plans are to renovate the mission-style, 34,000-square-foot building and open it as a boutique hotel. Ward has hired architect Peter Trapolin of New Orleans, a veteran of several successful historic hotel renovations.

While it’s still on the drawing board, Ward says, “It’s going to have 41 rooms and a restaurant on the New Hampshire corner. We’re looking for an exciting restaurateur to work with on the build-out.” She hopes her plans for the property spark as much interest in what the area has to offer today’s visitors as the elements did at the turn of the century. “I want people to come here and enjoy things like the bike path—we’re going to have bikes available and kayaks for the river.”

Renovations include facilities that Covington residents will be able to take advantage of as well as the hotel’s guests. “We’re going to have a ballroom and space for business meetings.” Ward notes the building is in the shape of a “u” that opens onto the alley that runs from New Hampshire to Vermont. “We’re going to close that in and have the ballroom and all those spaces spill out into a really beautiful courtyard. It will be a very nice party space. The hotel bar will be open to everyone, and that’s going to have access to the courtyard, too.”

Echoing Mayor Cooper’s optimism in the project’s role in the revitalization of downtown Covington, Ward says, “I think there’s going to be a renaissance. Covington is already a great little town. My personal vision is to expand the types and diversity of businesses into something similar to what Magazine Street has in New Orleans. If we put that together, get the movie theater open—and hopefully the hotel will be an ideal catalyst for that—it will become a really wonderful, pedestrian-friendly city that has a lot to offer.”

During his career as an earth scientist for Chevron, Chok travelled the  passion: cooking and sharing the food of their native Thailand, a move equivalent to a Louisiana native settling down and opening a gumbo and jambalaya joint in Bangkok.

Chok and Summalee of Sala Thai in Covington.

“We travelled around the world and did research on Thai and western foods,” Chok says. The couple’s passion for cooking native Thai specialties came naturally, as Chok’s grandmother cooked for the Thai royal family, and Sumalee’s mother was a chef for one of Bangkok’s five-star hotels. “So we have the recipes—the authentic recipes—passed along to us.”

Sumalee’s Bangkok culinary resources aren’t limited to her mother’s experience as a chef; she completed a Thai cooking training program there. Her experience and resources combine with Chok’s to make unique cuisine that stands out in a fairly competitive northshore Thai food market.

“What we like to do is not a business—we want to do it like art. The real homemade Thai food,” Chok notes.

“Our Pad Thai is totally different than the others,” says Sumalee of the Thai noodle-based dish. “I got this recipe from my mother. Of all the dishes we have on the menu, I think it’s the best we can cook.” Thai food has a reputation as a fiery cuisine, but what stands out for Sala Thai are the fresh spices and herbs used in their dishes—lemongrass, galangal, ginger and key lime leaves round out the heat in the curry dishes they serve.

Thai food novices take note: Sala Thai now offers a lunch buffet, which started as a better way to serve the busy and often time-pressed downtown Covington business people and the courthouse crowd. It’s also been a great way, Sumalee says, for people to become familiar with Thai dishes.

“They don’t want to try other dishes because they don’t know what they’re going to get. The buffet is a better way. You can come and taste a little bit of each thing, and every day we change the menu.”

Sala Thai is located at 315 N. Vermont St. in Covington; (985) 249-6990.

After a pause, he adds, “I’m Timmy.”

Like many people, Tim had not talked much about his personal experience with suicide because of society’s “hush, hush” attitude toward the subject. But in 2010, Kevin Davis, then parish president, made an effort to change that mindset by initiating the St. Tammany Parish Suicide Prevention Support Program with the slogan “It’s OK to talk about it.”

That’s when Tim decided it was time to share his story with others. He hopes that by speaking out, others in the community will become aware of the warning signs of suicide as well as the high suicide rate in our parish. “There’s been a hole in my heart as a result [of Tommy’s death], so I know the effects of suicide,” he adds. “It’s the elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about, but no one is immune to this. Every single day in St. Tammany parish, someone tries to kill himself.”

With 34 suicides in 2011 and 11 as of March 2012, St. Tammany Parish has one of the highest suicide rates in Louisiana. (In contrast, there were only six homicides in the parish in 2011, and one to date in 2012.) As St. Tammany’s suicide rate rose 30 percent from 2005 to 2010, Davis decided to take action.

John Tobin, Rebecca Thees and Tim Lentz.

In October 2010, members of the parish government met with other concerned leaders to determine a course of action. From this meeting, the St. Tammany Parish Suicide Prevention Support Program was born, with the goal of lowering the suicide rate by providing adequate resources to parish residents.

“Just as one single factor did not create today’s situation, one entity cannot solve it,” says Pat Brister, St. Tammany’s current parish president. “It will take many partners to return the necessary mental health services to our area.”

Currently, the St. Tammany Parish Suicide Prevention Support Program brings together representatives from many organizations, businesses and agencies who meet quarterly to discuss the most efficient and effective ways to reduce St. Tammany Parish’s high suicide rate and to provide resources for residents in need.

United Way/2-1-1

John Tobin, director of St. Tammany’s Department of Health and Human Services, was part of the suicide prevention task force from its inception. “At the first meeting, they decided they needed a single point of entry—one call,” he says. It was decided to use 2-1-1, which was already available. It is now the primary contact for all parish residents in need of counseling and resources for any crisis, including suicide.

The 2-1-1 information and referral line, currently funded by United Way, offers trained crisis-intervention and suicide-prevention specialists as well as multi-lingual counselors. These professionals are on call 24/7 to provide counseling and information about community resources. They can transfer callers directly to the appropriate 9-1-1 operators if necessary, and 9-1-1 operators throughout the parish can transfer callers to 2-1-1 when needed.

From October 2011 through March 2012, the 2-1-1 line in St. Tammany Parish fielded 1,648 calls, 29 percent of which were identified as “crisis/suicide calls.” Out of the 10 parishes served by 2-1-1, St. Tammany has the highest percentage of crisis calls, with Tangipahoa and Washington following close behind.

Besides giving free help to residents in need, the 2-1-1 line provides a valuable service to the law enforcement officers in the parish by fielding calls that would have otherwise gone to 9-1-1. In 2011, the sheriff’s department alone—which does not include the municipalities of Covington, Mandeville, Slidell, Madisonville, Pearl River, Folsom or Sun—responded to 543 suicide-attempt calls.

“Anytime someone dials 9-1-1, even if it was a mistake, my deputies are going, but some people really just need someone to talk to,” Tim Lentz says. “Many of the calls to 2-1-1 are calls that we don’t have to go to, but it still hasn’t slowed down. As of [late March], we have responded 127 times to attempted suicide calls in 2012.” (The numbers for the entire parish are even higher because the sheriff’s office only receives calls from unincorporated St. Tammany.)

“My men spend more time dealing with mental health calls than with traffic enforcement. It consumes us. We recognize the mental health crisis and we try to give our guys the best mental health training. But at the end of the day, we went to cop school. We’re not mental health professionals, but we are being forced into that role.”

Volunteers of America/Crisis Response Team

In response to the realization that most police officers are not properly equipped to handle suicide-attempt calls, the task force created a crisis action team through a partnership with the Volunteers of America. Using public health millage dollars, the parish government funded the Volunteers of America’s Crisis Response Team, which came online in August 2011.

“Our mission is two-fold,” says Rebecca Thees, Crisis Response project director. “When an officer calls, we respond immediately and go to the scene of an attempted suicide, and then we provide follow-up.” The team has five full-time and eight part-time licensed counselors who are on call 24/7 to respond to crises reported by the sheriff’s department.

Each deputy contacts the Crisis Response Team while on the way to the scene of an attempted suicide; at least one counselor meets the deputy and consults with everyone involved, including the individual in crisis and the family. The counselor evaluates the person’s condition and offers support and guidance. “Every situation is extremely different,” Rebecca says. “We are one of the first people they see, so we try to be a calming presence.”

After making an assessment and helping the deputy make a decision about the next step for the person, the counselor begins case management services, which are tailored to the individual’s needs. This last step is important because research shows that immediate support and a thorough follow-up will prevent subsequent attempts.

“We will stick with a family as long as we need to, helping them get resources and making sure they go to doctor’s appointments and counseling,” Rebecca says. “We try to get them long-term solutions to become stable and maintain that stability.” This dedication has paid off—none of the people who participated in the follow-up program with the Volunteers of America have made a second suicide attempt.

In the first three months of 2012, the response team was called out 144 times. Rebecca notes that this number only reflects the suicide attempts reported to the sheriff’s office, which does not include other police departments in the parish. “It’s obvious that the need far exceeds our ability to respond. It would be great if we could expand our services to provide assistance to all who have a mental health crisis.”

Nevertheless, the work that the Crisis Response Team has been able to do thus far has been invaluable. “They have been a godsend,” Tim says.

Mental Health Services

The severe lack of funds, facilities and professionals that are equipped to provide mental health services in St. Tammany posed a third problem to the original suicide prevention task force.

“The sad part about it is there’s just not enough help for these people, especially as there are more cutbacks for mental health in the state,” Tim says, adding that emergency rooms—where they have to bring many mentally ill residents—are not equipped to handle most cases.

While 2-1-1 and the Crisis Response Team were being set up, the parish took a more immediate course of action in January 2011 by funding two one-time grants totaling $75,000—one to St. Tammany Outreach for the Prevention of Suicide and one to the Mental Health Association of St. Tammany. These organizations used the funds to offer counseling to residents who could not afford it.

This was only a temporary solution, however. The parish government began working with the St. Tammany Community Health Center, a federally qualified health center in Slidell. The center, a 501(c)3 that handles about 5,000 cases each month, provides physical and mental services based on a sliding scale and also accepts Medicaid, making its services available to virtually anyone in the parish.

In September 2011, the parish solidified its partnership with the health center by supplying a grant to add a full-time social worker and a part-time psychiatrist to the staff. The grant was used to fund the new employees’ salaries, allowing the center to expand its much-needed counseling services. At the beginning of 2012, again with help from the parish, a second full-time social worker was hired, and there are plans to hire a third by the end of the summer. In the first three months of 2012, the center provided behavioral health services to 648 patients.

In keeping with the goal of providing for the mental needs of the community, Judge Peter Garcia of the 22nd Judicial Court initiated a behavioral health court in October 2011. This court operates with the knowledge that rather than serving time in jail, some offenders need intensive supervision to make sure they see their doctors and take their medications. “It has worked really, really well,” Tim says.

Suicide Prevention Resources

Research shows that suicide survivors—those who are left behind when a loved one has committed suicide—are twice as likely to commit suicide. One local organization that plays a key role addressing this issue is the St. Tammany Outreach for the Prevention of Suicide.

STOPS’s Local Outreach to the Survivors of Suicide team is one of the first of its kind in the nation, says Lynnette Savoie, administrative coordinator. The LOSS team is comprised of survivors of suicide who are on call 24/7 to meet with others who have recently lost a loved one to suicide. “They suffered losses in their own life, so they speak with their hearts,” says Tim, a founding member of STOPS. The organization also hosts a Survivors of Suicide support group twice a month for follow-up and support from other suicide survivors as well as a licensed clinical social worker.

Education about the warning signs of suicide and the appropriate courses of action is of paramount importance to the goal of preventing suicide in St. Tammany. STOPS offers two types of training: SafeTALK, a three-hour suicide alertness program; and Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training, an intensive two-day course about prevention and intervention.

“We are teaching people how to pick up on the signs and how to react to the signs,” Lynette says. Upcoming ASISTs are planned for June 14-15 as well as September 6-7 and 27-28. STOPS volunteers are also available to speak about suicide prevention to churches, schools, businesses and other groups.

St. Tammany’s chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness is also a partner in the parish’s suicide prevention, and some of the programs are supported by the healthcare millage. John Tobin recommends NAMI St. Tammany for those who need information on how to care for mentally ill family members and friends.

For more information about the St. Tammany Parish Suicide Prevention Support Program, visit itsoktotalkaboutit.org. Donations to the overall effort can be made to United Way at unitedwaysela.org. Donations for the crisis response team can be made to the Volunteers of America at voagno.org. For more information about STOPS, visit stops-la.org. For more information about NAMI St. Tammany, visit namisttammany.org.

On May 5, 1862, the Mexican army defeated French forces in the Battle of Puebla. The underdog victory, however, is not widely honored in Mexico outside the state of Puebla. Carlos Valencia of Carreta’s Grill says, “The holiday is not really celebrated in Mexico like it is in the states. Americans have embraced the holiday and the Mexican culture.”

Originally from Guadalajara, Mexico, Carlos moved to the United States in 1986 and now owns restaurants in Metairie, Slidell and Covington. He says, “A couple of years ago, Carreta’s Grill in Slidell expanded the celebration into a festival atmosphere, with anticipation growing throughout the spring. What started as a small party has grown to an enormous event where patrons even bring lawn chairs.” Just as everyone is Irish on St. Patrick’s Day, the food, music and spirit of the Mexican culture take over on Cinco de Mayo.

Local distributor Champagne Beverage Co. features a variety of Mexican beers for northshore residents to enjoy throughout the year—but especially on Cinco de Mayo. Favorite brands include Corona Extra, Corona Light, Modelo Especial, Negra Modelo and Pacifico.

Leticia Rubio and her family moved to the northshore about 15 years ago to open Hammond’s La Carreta with her brother, Saul. They both hail from Queretaro, Mexico. She and her staff at the Mandeville location spend a whole year preparing for Cinco de Mayo, booking bands and adding staff. In an industry that is built around serving up entertainment, Leticia knows that this has become an excellent opportunity to showcase her homeland. La Carreta’s other locations include Amite, LaPlace, Denham Springs and Baton Rouge.

“It’s the biggest celebration of the year for the restaurant. American people love it. They want everything Mexican—including their beer! Everyone wears festive colors and has fun with sombreros—even dance around them and drink beer from them. I love that, because it’s in touch with our culture,” says Leticia. She adds that with an overflowing parking lot and a packed house, the day feels like a Mexican Mardi Gras. We can certainly rally around that concept!

For Carlos’ and Leticia’s relatives back home in Mexico, May 5 is just another day. However, Mexico’s Independence Day, September 16, is celebrated a lot like July 4 in the United States—fireworks, outdoor parties, mariachi bands and often a much needed holiday the next day. Maybe if “Dieciséis de Septiembre” had the same kind of festive ring to it as “Cinco de Mayo,” we would all celebrate in the fall. Or, perhaps we should consider adding another celebration to our repertoire!

In 2011, we saw several major projects come to fruition, including the groundbreaking of the Associated Wholesale Grocers warehouse in Pearl River, a 720,000-square-foot facility that will bring 300 permanent jobs to our parish when it opens later this year. Indeed, economic data—which we track and publish quarterly in our Trends Report—show we have fared much better than the state and nation during the recent recession. While unemployment hit double-digits in many places, it remained at or near a healthy level here. Business startups continue apace, and the housing market is beginning to show signs of growth.

But we don’t rest on the successes of the past. At any given time, we have about 40 projects in progress, and some, such as AWG, take years to fulfill.

More than ever, we are focused on business retention. Keeping our economy healthy and our job growth steady involves more than just reaching out to new businesses and encouraging them to locate here, although that is vital to our mission. It also involves nurturing the businesses that are already here, helping them succeed by navigating state incentive programs, offering free educational opportunities and coordinating with municipal, parish and state officials as advocates for local businesses of all sizes.

Our biggest goal for this year is to expand St. Tammany’s inventory of certified sites, which are parcels of land that are ready for development. Louisiana Economic Development has already certified two such sites in St. Tammany, and two more are under review. Additionally, Cleco, which in 2010 launched its SmartSites program, is working to certify land at St. Joe Industrial Park in Pearl River. Sites successfully completing Cleco’s program will be promoted by Cleco nationwide as available, fully served and developable. We are also working with local landowners and developers to identify 100- to 250-acre tracts of land to keep the process virtually continual; our goal is to have six certified sites before year’s end.

While many of our efforts are behind the scenes, the impact can be seen everywhere in St. Tammany, from major construction projects to increased housing sales as new families move here to follow new jobs. Of course, nothing exists in a vacuum, and responsive local governments, comprehensive rezoning, low crime and quality education are all factors in our work—factors to which we contribute in a variety of ways.

Brenda Reine Bertus is the executive director of the St. Tammany Economic Development Foundation.

“My Father was an uneducated man and a disciplinarian, but he always participated in what we kids did,” Larry remembers. He adds that, despite the fact that his father’s job required much traveling, “He had a strong influence on us. We didn’t have a dad who was with us every night, but when we had him, we had him. When I was swimming [in a high school competition], he’d fly in from out of town to Shreveport or wherever I was.”

As a father, Larry mimicked his own father in the time he gave to his children. “Although single for 12 years, I stayed very close to my sons [Lance and Michael] through college,” he says. Even though he preferred golfing, Larry chose to be more present in his boys’ lives, whether as their baseball coach or basketball coach—or both. “I didn’t know what I was doing [as a coach], but I was out there with them,” he laughs.

When he remarried, Larry became the father of a 4-year-old boy, Adam. He was a baseball coach for him, too, but Adam was more interested in art. “He’s a tremendous artist and a computer whiz. We supported his interests.”

Larry also made an effort (which many say was a successful one) to instill gentlemanly qualities in his sons. He recalls teaching them to respect others, especially their elders. “It doesn’t matter who they are—you treat people with respect, and in return, you will be respected.” And this legacy lives on—“If you ever get around my grandkids, you’ll hear it.”

Larry Rase (center), his sons and grandsons.

After his own kids were grown, Larry didn’t stop giving to children. “I always said that when I was done raising my kids, I was going to take five years and give back.” As a member of 4th Ward Recreation, Larry played a significant role in the group that obtained funding and a land lease to build Pelican Park. “Now, 26 years later, my grandkids are playing there.”

Today, Larry works on the frontline of sales with Zen-Noh Grain/CGB in Covington. His family now includes two daughters-in-law and six grandchildren. At 93, his mother continues to be the strong matriarch of the family, which often gets together to have fun. “We’re all huge LSU fans; even my 4-year-old grandkid is in the stands,” Larry says. “We have weekend barbecues, crawfish boils, whatever is in season.”

Many people ask Larry how he handles his four granddaughters, since he never had a daughter of his own. He says the answer is simple—“I do exactly what they tell me to do!”

STHBA uses the money raised from the sale of raffle tickets to fund the construction of the house, marketing and other expenses incurred. The money left after expenses is divided among the year’s charities.
Last year, the charities split $165,000.

The 2012 charities are The Good Samaritan Ministry, Habitat for Humanity St. Tammany West, Support Our War Heroes, The Tammany Trace Foundation and The St. Tammany HBA Charitable Trust.

2012 STPHA Raffle House.

The Raffle House is always constructed by the previous year’s president of STHBA. This year’s house, by Integrity Builders, LLC, is located at 456 N. Corniche du Lac in Maison du Lac subdivision in Covington. Wainer Companies donated the lot. “Building the house was a great experience. So many people have helped by donating time and talent,” says Kenny Adams. “We wanted to use natural cypress beams in the great room, so we had to go all the way to Lafayette to get them. The whole project has turned out beautifully.”

This project could not have been completed without the donations of time, energy and products from many northshore businesses, including Resource Bank, which provided the funding, and Murphy Appraisal, which appraised the house for $470,000. Cabinetry throughout the house was provided by Milltown Cabinets. Pinegrove Electric supplied the interior light fixtures. Plumbing supplies were given by Southland Plumbing. The finishing touches to the exterior were provided by Bevolo Gas & Electric Lights. Adding to the beauty of the home are interior furnishings by American Factory Direct and carpeting by Carpet Showcase.

The winners of the 2011 Raffle House were Brandt and Lindsay Quick. “We got a phone message from Kenny Adams, asking us to call him right away,” says Brandt. “Lindsay said we must have won a cruise or a gift certificate. When I called Kenny back and he said we had won the house we were shocked beyond belief. We quickly checked the number on the ticket and then headed over to the house.”

The Quicks have lived in the house since September and love the neighborhood. “We are incredibly blessed to live with our family in such a wonderful house in a great neighborhood,” says Brandt.

Raising the Roof raffle tickets are $100; a maximum of 7,000 will be sold. The drawing for the winner will be held at the Raffle House on June 2, 2012, at 11am. For information on purchasing tickets, see raisingtheroof.net.

This past fall, the St. Tammany West Chamber offered its first international trip, which was a smashing success. Thirty-five travelers from throughout St. Tammany and surrounding areas ventured on a nine-day tour of Tuscany, Italy. With a base hotel in Montecatini Terme, they explored beautiful and historic areas, including Florence, Siena and San Gimiganano. Not only did several business leaders make the trip, but many took advantage of the incredible savings to travel with family or friends—including a mother-son duo, a father-daughter duo, sisters, best friends and retired couples. Many who could not go expressed interest in future trips.

The Tuscany tour was so well received that the Chamber will offer two trips this fall—one to Ireland in September and another to the Amalfi coast of Italy in October. For less than $3,000 per person, the 10-day package to Ireland—departing on September 3—includes roundtrip airfare from New Orleans, first-class hotel accommodations for nine nights, daily breakfasts and several dinners. Travelers will visit Dublin, Killarney and Limerick, with day excursions to Blarney Castle, the Ring of Kerry and the Cliffs of Moher. For those interested in the business aspects of the trip, a visit to the Waterford crystal factory and a whiskey factory will be included.

Departing on October 29, the nine-day package to the Amalfi coast, approximately $2,700, includes roundtrip airfare from New Orleans, first-class hotel accommodations in Sorrento and day trips to Ravello, Pompeii and Naples. Daily breakfasts and several dinners are included. Some optional tours are available, including a harbor cruise to Capri, a cooking tour in the countryside and a visit to a mozzarella cheese factory. An optional two-night Rome extension is also available.

Everyone is invited to join one (or both!) of these Chamber-sponsored journeys. Chamber membership is not required. For more information, contact Michelle Biggs at michelle@sttammanychamber.org.