ABITA SPRINGS • BARKER’S CORNER • BUSH • COVINGTON • FOLSOM • LACOMBE MADISONVILLE • MANDEVILLE • PEARL RIVER • SLIDELL
Farmer The St.Tammany
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S T TA M M A N Y FA R M E R.N E T
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W e d n e s d ay, D e c e m b e r 31, 2025
50¢N
152ND YEAR, NO. 12
The St. Tammany Farmer’s Top 10 stories of 2025
This year’s biggest story isn’t a myth, unfortunately
“Between Scylla and Charybdis” is a saying from Greek mythology that describes having to choose between two equally terrible options. Scylla was imagined to be a giant, six-headed creature that terrorized sailors along the Strait of Messina in the Mediterranean. Charybdis Andrew waited on the side of the pass, Canulette a vast whirlpool that sucked ANDREW’S entire ships and crews into ANGLE oblivion when they strayed too close. Choosing which monster to confront was one of many no-win situations facing Odysseus in Homer’s “The Odyssey” — the epic poem with a narrative similar to what’s being played out right here in St. Tammany Parish today, at least 2,500 years after “The Odyssey” was written. Consider local elected officials to be Odysseus and his crew returning home after the Greeks were victorious in the Trojan War — a fair comparison to Louisiana’s infamous knuckle-busting political campaigns. As they voyage back to Ithaca, they are befallen by a series of trials, one of them having to sail between the Scylla and Charybdis. It was Circe, a sea nymph, who advised Odysseus to confront the Scylla, the logic being it would be better to lose six crew (one to each of her heads) than watch the entire ship be engulfed and drowned by Charybdis. Circe’s advice was correct, but it didn’t come without bloodshed. And that’s where
ä See ANGLE, page 2A
PHOTO BY MATTHEW DOBBINS
Unprecedented snow during Winter Storm Enzo in January of 2025 affected all areas of St. Tammany Parish, all but obliterating Mardi Gras flags hanging proudly in Olde Towne Slidell.
2. Record snow blankets St. Tammany After what meteorologists billed as a 100year storm dumped as much as 8 inches of snow in St. Tammany Parish on Jan. 21, residents still were talking about the weather phenomenon three days later as they pulled tarps off their plants, unwrapped exposed pipes and surveyed the wet mess left behind as the final pockets of powder finally melted. Despite the clean-up that was ahead for some residents, most had nothing but rave reviews of the magnificent snow that made much of the Gulf Coast (from Texas through the panhandle of Florida)
look more like a scene from Lake Ontario’s shores in the dead of winter. It was, after all, an extremely odd site — snowdrifts nearly a foot high in Slidell, the Mandeville lakefront a frosty forest of towering oaks swaddled in grey mist, the statue of President Ronald Reagan at the Covington Trailhead looking like a Head and Shoulders shampoo ad, with a couple inches of snow resting on his bronze shoulders. And as far as any weather experts could tell, it was a record snowfall for all of St. Tammany — at least in recently recorded history, said Hannah Lisney, of the National Weather Service’s office in Slidell.
BY KADEE KRIEGER Contributing writer
PHOTO BY MATTHEW DOBBINS
STARC clients are the spirit of Christmas BY SARA PAGONES
at Slidell Little Theatre, she was overwhelmed by the memory of her daughter, Gina Marie, who died at 3. She had When Rose Marie Sand was first in- Down syndrome. “I didn’t even realize that I would get vited to be in a Christmas performance some of her friends put on annually for emotional,” Sand recalled. But after STARC clients, she was a newcomer to taking a moment to compose herself, Slidell and was just excited to be includ- Sand threw herself into the spirit of the ed in what she expected to be a lot of fun. ä See STARC, page 3A But as audience members arrived
Contributing writer
By 7 a.m. on Dec. 20, the inside of a Covington warehouse buzzed with the activity of workers as busy as elves packing boxes with assemblyline precision and joyful cheer. The scene sounds something like what is found at the North Pole. But instead of Santa’s workshop, the warehouse belonged to the Northshore Food Bank, and it was filled with volunteers for the Feeding the Needy Christmas service project. Feeding the Needy is a 23-year Covington community tradition in partnership with the Covington Rotary Club and distributed through the Northshore Food Bank. The 2025 project provided food baskets to almost 1,500 families across St. Tammany and Washington parishes, said Greg Langham, who spearheaded the event for the Covington Rotary. The baskets were filled with a full holiday meal — a turkey and sides, such as mashed potatoes and stuffing, with vegetables, and enough other food — gumbo mix, red beans, rice and chili — to provide up to four additional meals. A fundraiser luncheon held Dec. 9 at St. Paul’s School, along with business sponsorships
PHOTO BY GRANT THERKILDSEN
Ashley Culotta loads a box with food on Dec. 20 to be distributed as part of the Feeding the ä See FEEDING, page 3A Needy program.
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ä See TOP 10, page 2A
Covington’s Feeding the Needy program is 23 years strong
Cast member Rose Marie Sand joins STARC client Lynda Barbaro in entertaining the audience with a Christmas carol before the show.
PREVIOUSLY FROZEN
The entire parish was blanketed in white after event, officially called Winter Storm Enzo by meteorologists, with 5 inches recorded in Covington and more than 7 inches recorded in Slidell. To compare, Lisney said some 5 inches were recorded in Folsom in 2017. Before that, in 2008, Mandeville had 2.5 inches. There were also two inches of snow recorded in Slidell in both 1988 and 1993. Lisney said the NWS didn’t have data on snow levels in St. Tammany for either the 1963 or 1895 snowfalls that blanketed New Orleans with what some historians said was a
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