Charlton Lyons

Charlton Havard Lyons, Sr.
State Chairman, Louisiana Republican Party
In office 1964 – 1968
Preceded by	LeRoy C. Smallenberger
Succeeded by	Charles deGravelles
Born	September 3, 1894(1894-09-03) Abbeville, Vermilion Parish, Louisiana, USA
Died	August 8, 1973 (aged 78) Shreveport, Caddo Parish, Louisiana
Political party	Republican candidate for governor in 1964 and for the United States House of Representatives in 1961
Spouse(s)	Marjorie Hall Lyons (1895-1971, married 1917-her death)
Children	Charlton Lyons, Sr. (born 1921 and Hall McCord Lyons (1923-1998)
Occupation	Businessman; Oilman
Religion	Episcopal
(1) Lyons is usually considered "the father of the modern Republican Party in Louisiana." (2) Before he was his state's Republican chairman, Lyons made historic but unsuccessful races for governor and the United States House of Representatives. (3) The Marjorie Lyons Playhouse at Centenary College of Louisiana in Shreveport is named for Mrs. Lyons, herself an actress. (4) His C.H. Lyons Petroleum Company was his trademark, but Lyons also taught school for a time as a young man while he lived in Rapides and Grant parishes. (5) Lyons was also a lawyer but practiced only briefly while living in Winnfield, the ancestral of the Long political dynasty.

Charlton Havard Lyons, Sr. (September 3, 1894 – August 8, 1973), was a Shreveport oilman who in 1964 waged the first well-organized Republican bid for the Louisiana governorship since Reconstruction. Lyons also made a strong but losing bid for the United States House of Representatives in a special election in 1961. He is often considered the "father of the modern Republican Party in Louisiana."

Contents 1 From Abbeville to Shreveport 2 Marriage and associations 3 "Everybody can vote for Charlton Lyons" 4 37.5 percent was a record for a GOP candidate 5 Supporting Barry Goldwater 6 Lyons opposes Waggonner for Congress, 1961 7 Lyons passes the GOP baton to Treen 8 The death of Lyons 9 Honors and legacy 10 References

From Abbeville to Shreveport

Lyons was born in Abbeville, the seat of Vermilion Parish in south Louisiana, to Ernest John Lyons and the former Joyce Bentley Havard. He attended Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge but completed his bachelor of arts at Tulane University in New Orleans. He also earned a law degree from Tulane and was admitted to the Louisiana bar in 1916.

On August 28, 1917, Lyons married the former Marjorie Gladys Hall, who graduated from Newcomb College, the then-female counterpart to Tulane. She was an aspiring actress. In the spring of 1917, Maurice Fromkes painted a portrait of Marjorie Hall displayed at the Marjorie Lyons Playhouse at Centenary College in Shreveport. Mrs. Lyons was born in Eagle Point, Wisconsin, near Chippewa Falls in Chippewa County, on March 27, 1895, to Henry P. Hall and the former Laura O'Rourke. The Lyons marriage lasted until Marjorie's death on July 11, 1971.

From 1916-1917, he was the assistant principal of Glenmora High School in Glenmora in south Rapides Parish. From 1917-1918, Lyons was briefly the principal of Pollock High School in the community of Pollock in southeastern Grant Parish. He then entered the United States Army as a private near the end of World War I. Marjorie taught at Pollock High while her husband was away.^[1]

The Lyonses relocated to Winnfield, center of the Long dynasty. The legendary Huey Pierce Long, Jr., was rising to prominence. There Lyons practiced law for several years.^[2]

The couple then relocated to Shreveport. Lyons entered the oil business, establishing "C.H. Lyons Petroleum". By the 1950s, Lyons had become so successful in his field that he was named president of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, an interest group. He was also a director of the Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association, the National Petroleum Council, and the National Association of Manufacturers. He operated a 240-acre cattle ranch near Greenwood in Caddo Parish.^[1]

Marriage and associations

The Lyonses had two sons: Charlton Havard Lyons, Jr. (born 1921), a prominent Shreveport businessman and civic leader, and Hall M. Lyons (1923-1998) of Lafayette and later Grand Isle, a former Republican candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives and an Independent nominee for the U.S. Senate. His daughter-in-law was Shreveport socialite and philanthropist Susybelle Lyons, later divorced from Charlton, Jr.

Lyons was a member of the Masonic lodge, American Legion, Shreveport Country Club, and the Kappa Alpha and Phi Delta Phi fraternities. He was considered by friend and political rival alike as a man of great optimism and impeccable character. Virginia deGravelles of Lafayette, the Louisiana Republican national committeewoman from 1964-1968, called him a "wonderful, compassionate man." Charlton and Marjorie Lyons were Episcopalians.

"Everybody can vote for Charlton Lyons"

Lyons officially switched to the Republican Party in 1960, when he supported Richard M. Nixon for U.S. president. He is best known for his pathbreaking gubernatorial campaign waged in the winter of 1964. He posted billboards which delared that "Everybody Can Vote for Charlton Lyons," for he had to inform Louisiana's Democratic voters, then more than 98 percent of the registrants, that they actually had a choice in the general election that year—a phenomenon widely unknown in Louisiana between the Reconstruction Era and 1964.^[3] Democratic nominee John McKeithen (1918-1999) noted that he, at 45, was a generation younger than the 69-year-old Lyons. It was a rare use of age as an issue in Louisiana politics.

Ronald Reagan came to Louisiana to campaign for Lyons: this was only a few months before Reagan delivered his October 27, 1964 address, "A Time for Choosing", on national television to promote Barry Goldwater's presidential bid. The speech was credited with catapulting Reagan into the vanguard of national politics. Reagan, like Lyons, was a former Democrat who had become disenchanted with the liberal drift of the party.

McKeithen was outraged over Reagan's visit and urged the veteran actor of film and television "to return to Hollywood and do something about the standing immorality and communism that flourishes in that city." McKeithen predicted that Louisiana Democrats would "repel this second invasion by the carpetbaggers." Two years later, Reagan was elected governor of California. McKeithen portrayed Lyons as the beneficiary of "special interests" and "a group of millionaires." Lyons would "help the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer," wailed McKeithen. Lyons, however, denied that most of his supporters were even wealthy. "A Victory for Lyons Will Electrify the Nation", said one of the candidate's brochures.

McKeithen seemed to resent having to face a Republican challenger after he survived two Democratic primaries. He called for an end to two Democratic primaries to be followed by a general election with Republicans, but the process of three elections was barely getting underway.

The Louisiana media gave wide coverage to the McKeithen-Lyons battle. Adras LaBorde, managing editor of the Alexandria Daily Town Talk,' took advantage of the state's first heated Democrat-Republican campaign for governor and covered the election widely in his column "The Talk of the Town". Both Shreveport papers, The Times and the now defunct Journal, owned by Douglas F. Attaway, covered nearly every aspect of the campaign. Journal editor George W. Shannon endorsed Lyons, as he later in the year would Goldwater.

Lyons developed a cadre of young followers in the Republican Party. He designated George Joseph Despot (1927-1991), another Shreveport oilman, and Certified Public Accountant George A. Burton, Jr., as his gubernatorial campaign co-chairmen, mostly because it was Despot and Burton who pleaded with Lyons to enter the race. Burton (born 1926), a lifelong Louisiana Republican, described Lyons in glowing terms: "a great American. . . a friend of impeccable integrity." Lloyd E. Lenard, later a Republican member of the Caddo Parish Commission (formerly called Police Jury) from 1984-1996 and an author, flew around the state with Lyons and interviewed him for radio and newspapers.^[4]

37.5 percent was a record for a GOP candidate

Lyons lost to Democrat McKeithen in the March 3, 1964, general election, but his 297,753 ballots (37.5 percent), helped to pave the way for the victory in Louisiana that November of the Goldwater-Miller presidential electors. McKeithen polled 469,589 votes (60.7 percent). (The last of the States' Rights Party gubernatorial nominees in Louisiana history, Thomas S. Williams from the town of Ethel in East Feliciana Parish, received 6,048 votes, or 1.8 percent).

Lyons polled majorities in five parishes, Caddo, Bossier, Claiborne, Lincoln, and De Soto, all in north Louisiana. He polled more than 47 percent in East Baton Rouge Parish and in Webster Parish. In La Salle Parish, which had supported Richard Nixon in 1960 and Taylor W. O'Hearn for the U.S. Senate in 1962, Lyons drew less than 30 percent of the vote, a factor perhaps explained by the fact that the parish is located due south of McKeithen's Caldwell Parish.

In victory, the testy McKeithen was magnanimous toward his rival: "My opponent waged a tremendous campaign for a man of his age. I am glad I don't have to run against him again." The Shreveport Journal, which endorsed Lyons, observed that the Republican vote was "not so much a vote against John McKeithen, who had already taken the district in Democratic balloting, as it was an expression of endearment for a man who is regarded as one of our most outstanding citizens."

Billy James Guin, Sr. (born 1927), later the Shreveport public utilities commissioner who had run for the state legislature from Caddo Parish on the Lyons ticket, described Lyons as "a good man who wanted to change the political complexion of Louisiana. He built the Republican Party in its present form. He was a great campaigner, and there was much grassroots fervor. When he began to make inroads, the sheriffs and other Democratic officeholders proceeded to block his election."

Lyons' strength was reflective of that of former Little Rock Mayor Pratt C. Remmel, the 1954 Republican gubernatorial nominee in neighboring Arkansas. Remmel—a decade before Lyons—also polled 37 percent of the vote in his hard-fought race against the Democrat Orval Eugene Faubus and won six of the state's seventy-five counties. Remmel paved the way for the election twelve years later of Winthrop Rockefeller. Lyons was the forerunner for David C. Treen, fifteen years later the first modern-day Republican elected governor of Louisiana.

Supporting Barry Goldwater

In 1963, Charlton Lyons and Baton Rouge businessman James H. Boyce, who was himself still a nominal Democrat, went with a group of mostly Republican conservatives to urge Goldwater to seek the presidency. Goldwater was at first reluctant to take on the challenge but nevertheless declared his candidacy early in 1964, when the Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson had been president for less than two months and the favorite for a full term of his own.

Boyce thereafter switched parties and became the campaign treasurer for the Lyons gubernatorial bid. (He would serve as state party chairman from 1972-1976.) In that campaign, McKeithen had accused Lyons of being precommitted to the 1964 Republican presidential candidate, and he incorrectly predicted that the nominee would be, not Senator Goldwater, but then New York Governor Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller, considered the liberal, internationalist candidate. McKeithen said that he would keep his options open for the 1964 presidential election. As it turned out, he remained neutral in that race, but the state's two popular Democratic senators, Allen Ellender and Russell B. Long, both supported the ticket of Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey.^[5]

No sooner had the gubernatorial race ended than Lyons resumed working for Goldwater's nomination as president. After the gubernatorial campaign, Lyons became the state GOP party chairman and led the state delegation to the national convention held in San Francisco's Cow Palace. His vice chairman was Harriet Belchic, a Shreveport civic and political leader who was also the first woman to have received both bachelor's and master's degrees from LSU in the field of geology.

Lyons worked to persuade several leading Louisiana Democrats to support Goldwater, including former Governors Sam Houston Jones and Robert F. Kennon and Lieutenant Governor Clarence C. "Taddy" Aycock of Franklin in St. Mary Parish. He also recruited congressional candidates in the 1964 election, David C. Treen of New Orleans, in a second race against Hale Boggs; William Stewart Walker, in a challenge to Speedy O. Long in the former 8th district; Robert Angers of Lafayette, challenging Edwin E. Willis of St. Martinville in the 3rd district, and Floyd O. Crawford of Baton Rouge, making a race against James H. Morrison.

Goldwater defeated LBJ in Louisiana and won some parishes by 5-1 margins or better, particularly in the northern tier of parishes. None of the congressional candidates, however, fared any better than Walker's 46 percent showing against Speedy Long.

Lyons opposes Waggonner for Congress, 1961

Three years before his gubernatorial campaign, Lyons ran in a special election for the Louisiana Fourth Congressional District seat. A vacancy developed with the death of longterm Democratic Representative Thomas Overton Brooks of Shreveport. In the 1960 general election, Brooks had defeated Republican Fred C. McClanahan, Jr., (1918-2007) of Shreveport by a wide margin, 48,286 (74.2 percent) to 16,827 (25.8 percent).

In a campaign advertisement, the Republicans proclaimed that "A Vote for Charlton Lyons for Congress Is a Vote Against the New Frontier", the domestic program of U.S. President John F. Kennedy.^[6] Lyons declared that the "election of a Republican from this district would have a profound impact upon the rest of the nation and upon Democratic congressmen in the South."^[1]He vowed if elected not to "trade vote" with colleagues so that each obtain could obtain passage of measures they prefer. "I think the trading of votes is one of the reasons this country is in such bad shape today. . . . When a central government becomes all powerful, a dictator inevitably takes over."^[1]

Lyons was considered a trade protectionist. In an advertisement underwritten by his friend George A. Burton, Lyons opposed the "vast influx of imported products which are flooding the country" and causing unfair competition to American manufacturers.^[7]

Lyons made a much stronger showing in the northwest Louisiana district, but the seat went to Joe Waggonner, from Plain Dealing in Bossier Parish, a conservative Democrat who had once been president of the segregationist Louisiana Citizen's Council. Waggonner held the seat until he retired in 1979. Waggonner (1918-2007) had already announced that he would challenge Brooks for renomination in 1962 because of Brooks' vote in 1961 to enlarge the membership of the House Rules Committee. This permitted Speaker Sam Rayburn of Texas to add new liberal representation to the panel which had long been chaired by the Virginia conservative Howard W. Smith.

Lyons claimed that victory by Waggonner would be interpreted as support for policies of President Kennedy and Vice President Johnson, while Waggonner claimed that the election of Lyons would mean increased importance being placed on black bloc voting through the establishment of a two-party system. In the special election, Lyons won his own Caddo Parish with 58.7 percent, but districtwide, the totals were 28,250 votes (45.5 percent) for Lyons and 33,892 (54.5 percent) for Waggonner. After the Lyons campaign of 1961, no other Republican opposed Waggonner, who was customarily reelected without opposition.

In 1988, a Republican, Jim McCrery, a Shreveport native who grew up in Leesville in Vernon Parish, won the district in another special election created by the election of Congressman Buddy Roemer, as governor. McCrery has since held the seat with relatively little difficulty.

Lyons passes the GOP baton to Treen

Lyons had stepped down as party chairman in 1968 and was succeeded by his friend and fellow oilman Charles deGravelles, Jr., of Lafayette. Charles' wife, Virginia Wheadon deGravelles, had been the national committeewoman from 1964-1968 and was a great admirer of Charlton Lyons.

In 1972, Lyons supported Republican gubernatorial candidate David Treen of suburban New Orleans, even though Lyons' son, Hall Lyons, was running for governor on the American Independent Party ticket, an organization founded in 1968 by Alabama Governor George C. Wallace, Jr, (1963-1967; 1971-1979; 1983-1987). Hall Lyons withdrew from the race and endorsed Treen, who lost the general election to Democrat Edwin Washington Edwards. In 1966, Hall Lyons ran for Congress in the Lafayette-based district, but he lost to veteran Democrat Edwin E. Willis (1904-1972), a supporter of President Johnson. Unlike his son, Charlton Lyons had opposed Wallace, who had won Louisiana in 1968. Charlton Lyons supported the Richard M. Nixon-Spiro T. Agnew elector slate, which fared poorly in the state.

The death of Lyons

Lyons died some eight months after David Treen had been elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from the reconfigured Third Congressional District, which included parts of suburban New Orleans. He lived just long enough to witness the first glimpse of his dream of a two-party system for traditionally Democratic Louisiana.

The Lyonses were buried in the family plot in Forest Park Cemetery off St. Vincent Avenue in Shreveport. Lyons' only sister Sally was married to Thomas M. "Tom" Logan. The Logans were buried at Forest Park across the street from the Lyons-Hall plot.

Honors and legacy

• Lyons received "Humanitarian of the Year" award at the Abbeville Dairy Festival, his hometown.

• The Charlton Lyons papers (covering 1942-1973) are held at the archives of Louisiana State University.

• He established the Marjorie Lyons Theater at Centenary College in Shreveport in memory of his wife and her theater interests.

References

• "Charlton H. Lyons," A Dictionary of Louisiana Biography, Vol. 1 (1988), pp. 528-529
• http://www.gopusa.com/commentary/mbayham/2002/mb_1125p.shtml
• http://www.centenary.edu/news/1997/July/funnygif.html
• http://www.ou.edu/special/albertctr/archives/WickershamInventory/Wick09.htm
• http://capitolwatch.reallouisiana.com/html/A75E1178-828D-4719-8077-E42A0AA2B4C3.shtml
• http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/guidedisplay.pl?index=G000267
• http://capitolwatch.reallouisiana.com/html/A75E1178-828D-4719-8077-E42A0AA2B4C3.shtml
• Shreveport Journal, March 3-4, 1964
• Perry Howard, Political Tendencies in Louisiana, LSU Press, 1971
• Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, March 6, 1964

Preceded by LeRoy C. Smallenberger

Louisiana State Republican Chairman Charlton Havard Lyons, Sr. 1964—1968

Succeeded by Charles deGravelles