Local doctor prescribes 1,500 pounds of crawfish for STHS team members

Dr. Gary Agena was planning on suspending his annual Crawfish and Roses cook-off for 2020 while his team retooled the event. Then the coronavirus outbreak happened and he leapt into action – with help from Mike Benjamin of T-Rivers and a team of volunteers – to feed the troops at St. Tammany Health System. (Photos by Mike Scott/STHS)

By Mike Scott, mscott@stph.org

As a longtime Madisonville-area OB/GYN, Dr. Gary Agena is used to delivering bundles of joy. But the special delivery he made at St. Tammany Health System’s main hospital campus on Friday (May 1) was of an altogether different sort.

For starters, it was decidedly spicier. And it had claws.

Under the auspices of his 6-year-old Crawfish and Roses foundation – which works in support of people with developmental differences – Agena and a team of about 10 volunteers helped lift the spirits of the hospital’s team amid the COVID-19 crisis by distributing 1,500 pounds of freshly boiled crawfish to STHS employees.  

“We just felt like we still wanted to do something for our community, and this is in our pocket, we know how to do this,” Agena said Friday. “So we figured we’d come out and give back to the hospital.”

Ordinarily at this time of year, Agena would be knee-deep in annual Crawfish and Roses cook-off, traditionally held in early May to coincide with the Kentucky Derby – which is also known as “The Run for the Roses,” thus the name of Agena’s event.

This year, though, the foundation planned to take a year off, “to regroup for some changes for the future to make it even bigger and better,” Agena said.

Then the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic happened, and, just like that, Agena scrapped his plans to sit on the sidelines.

Instead, he reached out to Mike Benjamin, the owner of T-River’s Bar & Grill – and, more importantly, the winner of last year’s Crawfish and Roses cook-off.

“He responded in like 2 minutes flat to my text, and he was like, ‘Hell, yes, I want to be out there,’” Agena said.

Initially, Agena and Benjamin planned to cook up 1,000 pounds of crawfish on Benjamin’s 36-foot trailer/crawfish kitchen, along with traditional sides including corn, sausage and potatoes. But with some 600 pounds of crawfish being snapped up in a little more than an hour Friday afternoon, they called for reinforcements in the form of 500 additional pounds of crawfish.

Hospital employees, predictably, ate it up.

That included Irina Longley, a licensed practical nurse who was among the STHS team members waiting in line to pick up a bag of crawfish to take home with her at the end of her shift Friday.

“This is just really nice,” she said.

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Visit STPH.org/COVID-19  for the latest information on coronavirus in St. Tammany Parish.

Irina Longley, left, a licensed practical nurse at STHS, picks up a bag of crawfish from Dr. Gary Agena's team of volunteers on Friday, May 1, 2020. (Photo by Melissa Hodgson/STHS)