Charles and Virginia de Gravelles

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Charles Camille "Charlie" de Gravelles, Jr. (born June 24, 1913), and Virginia Wheadon de Gravelles (born December 4, 1915) are a retired Lafayette couple who held major leadership positions in the Louisiana Republican Party from 1968-1972 and 1964-1968, respectively. De Gravelles was the party chairman, and Mrs. de Gravelles was the national committeewoman. When de Gravelles assumed the chairmanship, the Louisiana GOP had only 28,427 registered members, barely 2 percent of the state's voters. For a brief time in 1968, both de Gravelleses were on the Republican National Committee, a husband-wife combination that has not since repeated itself.

1 Early years, family, and education
2 A man of the oil industry
3 Lafayette's first registered white Republicans
4 Louisiana GOP mulls Nixon and Reagan
5 Political Hall of Fame
6 References

[edit] Early years, family, and education

De Gravelles (pronounced DE GRA VELLES) was born to Dr. and Mrs. Charles Camille de Gravelles, Sr., in Thibodaux, in Lafourche Parish. His father practiced in several cities and was the last doctor in New Iberia to make house calls. De Gravelles graduated from Thibodaux High School in 1929.

Virginia Wheadon was born in Alexandria, to John Samuel Butler Wheadon and the former Anna Kilpatrick. Her father owned the former Rapides Hotel on Second Street. The building was torn down about 1960. Mrs. Wheadon was a homemaker and a legal secretary. Virginia lived next door for a time to the family of Nauman Steele Scott, I. Nauman Scott, II, with whom she recalls having ridden tricycles together, went on to become a U.S. district judge in the Western District of Louisiana, based in Alexandria. (Scott died in 2001.) Virginia's grandfather was a sheriff, and her great-grandfather was a judge. Virginia graduated from Bolton High School in 1931 and attended Louisiana normal school in Natchitoches for two years. Thereafter, she transferred to Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, where she received her degree in education and met Charles.

Charles and Virginia married on September 14, 1935. They eloped and were wed by a justice of the peace in Woodville, Mississippi, in Wilkinson County. De Gravelles noted in 2006 that he had been "happily married for 71 years." Their elopement came the same week that the legendary Huey Pierce Long, Jr., lay dying in a Baton Rouge hospital from the hands of an apparent assassin.

The de Gravelleses had five children, twin sons (born 1949) and three daughters, one, Alix de Gravelles, deceased. The sons are Charles Nations de Gravelles, an Episcopal archdeacon, and John W. de Gravelles, an attorney, both of Baton Rouge. The surviving daughters are Claire Cloninger, a writer of books and contemporary Christian music in Fairhope, Alabama, in Baldwin County near Mobile, and Ann McBride Norton of Bali, Indonesia. Son-in-law Ed Norton works for the Nature Conservancy in environmental projects, and daughter Ann is a photographer with her own company, Photo Voice. The Nortons often visit Ambassador and Mrs. Grover J. Rees, III, in East Timor. Most of Rees' family resides in Lafayette, and the de Gravelles children grew up with Rees and his siblings.

The de Gravelleses had 13 grandchildren, 13 great-grandchildren, and one great-great-grandchild, as of July 2006.

[edit] A man of the oil industry

De Gravelles received his degree from LSU and completed all but one course in law school. He was not admitted to the bar. Instead, he was hired in 1937, in the Great Depression, when a recession had returned within the depression, by Standolin Oil and Gas Company (later Amoco) in Lake Charles. He was dispatched to the Anse la Butte area to buy leases for the company. His position was referred to as that of a landman. He knew some French and had a French last name but was not Catholic; yet the company believed that he could connect well with the local people at Anse la Butte. In 1940, de Gravelles moved permanently to Lafayette. He remained with the same company until his official retirement in 1999. He actually "retired" and was called back by the company for several years thereafter.

During his time in Lafayette, de Gravelles watched the city grow rapidly because of the expansion of the oil industry. He lauded Amoco as an employer and said that he fully enjoyed his time in the oil field.

[edit] Lafayette's first registered white Republicans

The de Gravelleses became active in local and state politics but never ran for office themselves. In 1940, he and Mrs. Gravelles became the first two whites in many years to register as Republican voters in Lafayette Parish. The only registered Republicans then were a few blacks, who were then largely frozen out of the pivotal Democratic primaries. Mrs. de Gravelles recalls that she, as a 24-year-old housewife, campaigned for Wendell Willkie over Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, who swept Louisiana, the South, and the nation. Another Republican, David W. Pipes, Jr., unsuccessfully sought the Acadiana-based Third Congressional District seat in that same election. The de Gravelleses hence are among the oldest living Republicans in the state of Louisiana.

[edit] Louisiana GOP mulls Nixon and Reagan

Charles de Gravelles succeeded Charlton Havard Lyons, Sr., of Shreveport in Caddo Parish, the 1964 Republican gubernatorial nominee, as the Louisiana party chairman. Mrs. de Gravelles recalls Lyons as "a wonderful, compassionate man" who was a true pionner in the development of a two-party system in Louisiana. De Gravelles and Lyons were pledged to the nomination and election of former Vice President Richard M. Nixon.

A minority in the state delegation, however, seemed enchanted with a potential unannounced third candidate, then California Governor Ronald W. Reagan, who had stumped for Lyons in the winter of 1964 by giving stemwinder speeches in Lafayette, Lake Charles, and Baton Rouge. De Gravelles summed up the majority opinon of the Louisiana party when he said, "much as I admire Governor Reagan, I feel that Nixon has a broad appeal and is the best qualified man in either party." The chairman predicted that Nixon would be vigorously challenged in Louisiana, not by the Democratic nominee, Vice President Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, but the third-party forces pledged to then former Alabama Governor George C. Wallace, Jr. Most of the Louisiana GOP delegates did favor Reagan as a vice-presidential choice in 1968, a selection that ultimately went to Maryland Governor Spiro T. Agnew, who was forced to resign in 1973 for tax evasion and bribery.

De Gravelles expressed hope that Louisiana voters might be persuaded to support the Republican ticket despite Wallace's appeal to blue collar white voters. Louisiana was one of five states to support Wallace in 1968. The Nixon-Agnew electors drew 257,535 votes (23.5 percent) in Louisiana, to Wallace's 530,300 (48.3 percent) and Humphrey's 309,615 (28.2 percent). Nixon ran 26,55 votes ahead of his 1960 showing in raw popular votes in Louisiana, but his 1968 showing was 5.1 percentage points below the previous standing.

The de Gravelleses each attended one national GOP convention: he in 1972 in Miami Beach, and she in 1964 in San Francisco.

In his later political activities, de Gravelles in 1993 tried to recall the late Democratic Mayor Kenneth F. "Kenny" Bowen from office on grounds that Bowen was too much of a "micromanager" and too unstable to run the city efficiently and fairly. Though sufficient signatures were obtained to have the recall election, the judge disqualified many of the names, and Bowen completed his third and final term in office.

[edit] Political Hall of Fame

Charles and Virginia de Gravelles have won several joint awards, primarily for their two-party and Republican activities. They have been honored by Freedoms Foundation of Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, and the Louisiana Republican Party for lifetime achievement. Mrs. de Gravelles has been cited by the Daughters of the American Revolution, of which she was a 50-year member as of 2006.

They will, moreover, be inducted into the Louisiana Political Museum and Hall of Fame in Winnfield on January 27, 2007. They will be the first couple honored together by the organization, which began honoring Louisiana politicos in 1993. Former Congresswoman Corrine Claiborne "Lindy" Boggs of New Orleans was inducted in 1994, a year after posthumous honors were given to her husband, Thomas Hale Boggs, Sr. The de Gravelleses' rival, Kenny Bowen, who had been a budding Lafayette Republican in the 1960s before he moved to the Democratic camp, was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2002, shortly before his death.

The de Gravelleses remain reasonably active for a couple in their 90s, but Charles is confined to a wheelchair. They are Episcopalians.

Preceded by Charlton Havard Lyons, Sr.	Louisiana Republican State Chairman Charles Camille de Gravelles, Jr. 1968–1972	Succeeded by James H. Boyce