Crawfish deliver a sense of normalcy to medical workers; a veteran gets a surprise, and other acts of kindness

https://www.nola.com/entertainment_life/acts_of_kindness/article_97e00a34-90bd-11ea-9f4a-ffdaeda78be9.html

BY ANNETTE SISCO | STAFF WRITER PUBLISHED MAY 11,2020 

From left, Claire, Glynn Jr., Glynn Sr., Cassandra and Gannon Hyer.

• PHOTO COURTESY OF CASSANDRA HYER

Glynn Hyer, center, is surrounded by family members showing off their gloves as they prepare to pack crawfish for delivery to the homes of local ER and ICU doctors and nurses.

After 35 years of boiling crawfish, Glynn Hyer knows the drill.

He hoses off the mudbugs, seasons the water and lets the crawfish soak in the pot that came from his late uncle’s camp in Little Woods.

And then there’s the feast with family, buddies and neighbors.

It’s a ritual on spring Fridays. But six weeks ago, as the glistening red crustaceans emerged steaming from their salty bath, Glynn couldn’t stop thinking about a couple of doctors he knew who were working overtime battling the coronavirus epidemic.

So he packed up some crawfish and sent them over to the homes of Drs. Peter DeBlieux and Fred Lopez.

“I just thought it was a really nice idea, for them to come home and get that sense of normalcy,” Hyer said.

Hyer, 60, is the second-generation owner of Irish Channel Iron Works, which builds and installs decorative iron in homes and businesses all over town. For more than a decade, he coached youth baseball with Carrollton Boosters. He was a New Orleans firefighter for seven years. He comes from an Irish Channel family of six siblings and has five kids of his own.

In other words, he’s probably 2 degrees of separation from a large fraction of New Orleans residents, including, as it turns out, plenty of doctors and nurses.

Within a couple weeks, Hyer and his family had added a second pot and were boiling 500 to 600 pounds of crawfish on Friday afternoons. They pack them assembly line-style in their Lakewood South carport with corn and potatoes and even a couple of beers, and deliver them to the homes of 50 to 60 doctors and nurses who work at emergency rooms and intensive care units.

Hygiene rules are strictly enforced. “We have a line in the sand; anyone who goes under the carport has to have a mask on,” Hyer said.

Hyer picks up sacks of live crawfish in Marrero on Fridays about 11:30 a.m. and boils all afternoon. Deliveries are mostly handled by wife Cassandra and children Glynn Jr., 24; Claire, 22, and Gannon, 18. Other helpers are David Cahn, Jeremy Mancheski and Billy Schoen.

Friends and family chip in to a fund dubbed “Irish Channel Cares.” Any money left over will go to St. Michael’s Special School and local food banks, Hyer said.

Terri Whitcomb’s husband, Darren, is an emergency room doctor at West Jefferson Medical Center. She said the night the crawfish showed up on their doorstep was one of the most enjoyable evenings the family has had since the pandemic began.

“We haven’t seen my husband so relaxed and full of laughter,” she said. “Life has been so stressful for him, and tonight was a definite reprieve from that.”

“That’s exactly what we set out to accomplish,” Hyer said.

Birthday Jeeps

Robert ‘Emmett’ Stanley waves to neighbors and friends who came outside to wish him a happy 97th birthday at his home in Terrytown.

PHOTO BY RENEE CALLIGAN

On May 3, Robert Emmett Stanley turned 97. The Navy veteran earned two Purple Hearts in World War II after his ship, the USS Luce, was bombed by Japanese kamikaze planes in 1945. Stanley was rescued from the water after 16 hours.

Stanley says he’s the last survivor from the Luce. Nowadays, he lives alone in his Terrytown home, and nieces and nephews out of town were not able to visit this year or take him on a traditional family beach trip due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“He lives next door to my parents, and he has been living there for years and years,” said Renee Calligan. She occasionally brings him a plate of food, and after she did so recently, “Mr. Emmett” mentioned his birthday was coming up.

So Calligan hatched a plan. She made a flyer and dropped it off to neighbors, asking them to come outside at 2 p.m. that day to celebrate. One of the neighbors happens to belong to an outfit called the Cajun Outcast Jeep Club, and he offered to do a Jeep parade.

Calligan called Stanley to ask if he was going to be home.

“Well, honey, yes,” he answered, “‘I’ve been home for seven weeks.'”

At 2 p.m. Sunday, neighbors began emerging from their houses, some wearing paper birthday hats. Calligan rang Stanley’s doorbell. The veteran peeked out to see his neighbors standing in the street, on the sidewalk and on the lawns, singing “Happy Birthday.” Sirens approached, and a procession of Jeeps turned down the cul-de-sac, honking their horns.

“I was sitting here looking at TV,” Stanley recalled on Monday. “When I saw them, I said, ‘What the heck! Somebody is having a parade out here.'”

Of course, the parade was in his honor.

“I don’t believe anyone has ever done anything like that for me before,” he said. “It’s really, really outstanding.”

Masks on the (little, free) shelf

“Over here in Algiers there’s a lady who has been making face masks for anyone who needs them since April 3,” said Mary Ann Nally.

Valerie Lorio of Maumus Avenue already stocks a Little Free Library of books for her neighbors. Since the coronavirus pandemic, she’s added protective face masks.

“Every day she makes several masks and puts them in a box near her Little Library, and the masks are there for the taking,” Nally said.

“She refuses any monetary donations to help defray her costs. She usually puts a daily notice on the Algiers Next Door app saying ‘Masks are out!’ to let folks know there are masks ready for anyone who needs them.”

Errands and photos

Bernie Renton, of Kenner, wanted everyone to know that her granddaughter Katharine Renton is making the difference between her being home alone and her being home alone, miserable.

Katharine has called to make sure that her grandmother is all right, has bought groceries and run any errands she needed, said Renton, a retired registered nurse who takes self-isolation seriously.

Another granddaughter, Kelsea Renton Roth, sends her photos of her great-granddaughters “to bridge the gap of not being able to see them in person,” she said.

“All these acts of kindness were so meaningful and deeply appreciated, and have made my stay-at-home time bearable. Thanks to them all,” Renton said.