Hall M. Lyons

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Hall McCord Lyons (December 22, 1923 -- July 22, 1998) was a Shreveport and, later, Lafayette oilman who for a short time was a pioneer in the establishment of a competititve Republican Party in Louisiana. He was the son of the party's 1964 gubernatorial nominee, Charlton Havard Lyons, Sr. However, in 1972, despite his father's wishes, Hall Lyons left the GOP to run as the American Independent Party nominee for the U.S. Senate.

1 Early years, education, military
2 Challenging Edwin Willis for Congress
3 Do conservatives have a home in the GOP?
4 Lyons' obituary
5 References

[edit] Early years, education, military

Lyons was born in Shreveport to Charlton Lyons, Sr., (1894-1973) and the former Marjorie Gladys Hall (1895-1971), an actress for whom the "Marjorie Lyons Playhouse" on the campus of Centenary College in Shreveport is named. He was given his mother's maiden name. His middle name was derived from C.T. McCord, the husband of Dorothy Hall McCord, an uncle and aunt of Marjorie Lyons, both of whom were much beloved by Charlton and Marjorie Lyons. Hall Lyons attended the private Southfield elementary school in Shreveport. He then transferred to the Lawrenceville School, a private boarding and college preparatory institution in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, near Princeton. Then, he attended Louisiana Tech University (at the time "Louisiana Polytechnic Institute") in Ruston in Lincoln Parish.

Lyons volunteered for the U.S. Navy in World War II. Commissioned an ensign, Lyons was posted in the Leyte Gulf in the Philippine Islands. He was part of the liberation of Okinawa. After the war ended, he returned home to attend Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. He received a degree in arts and sciences in June 1949.

He was a partner in Lyons Petroleum in Shreveport. He moved to Lafayette in 1964 to become an independent operator there. His father had lost the governor's election that year to the Democrat John Julian McKeithen, but the family retained a keen interest in promoting the Republican Party in Louisiana.

[edit] Challenging Edwin Willis for Congress

In 1966, Hall Lyons challenged the reelection of veteran Third District Democratic Congressman Edwin Edward Willis, a member of the Long political faction. The atmosphere of 1966 seemed encouraging to Republicans in Lafayette. Roderick Miller of Lafayette had just become only the third Republican in modern times to win a state legislative seat in a special election. Lyons painted Willis as subservient to President Lyndon B. Johnson and the Great Society programs. Willis nevertheless won, but never before had he faced such a competitive Republican. Willis received 46,533 votes (59.7 percent) to Lyons' 31,444 (40.3 percent). Lyons won Iberia Parish with 51.4 percent of the vote, and he received 46 percent in is adopted Lafayette Parish.

Six years later, in 1972, this Third District seat, having been reconstituted after redistricting, went Republican, when David C. Treen, then of Jefferson Parish, defeated the Democrat J. Louis Watkins, Jr. It was the first Republican congressional victory in Louisiana since Reconstruction. Treen, who had lost three U.S. House elections in the former Second District to Thomas Hale Boggs, Sr., of New Orleans was aided in the campaign by the momentum of Richard M. Nixon's reelection and the absence of an incumbent in the race. Patrick Thomson "Pat" Caffery, a conservative who had upset Willis in the 1968 Democratic primary, did not seek a third term in 1972 but retired to his New Iberia law practice.

[edit] Do conservatives have a home in the GOP?

In 1968, Charlton Lyons attended the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach and thereafter headed the Louisiana campaign to elect Nixon as president. He had similarly worked for Barry M. Goldwater in 1964, who went on to win Louisiana in the presidential election. Hall Lyons, however, favored former Alabama Governor George C. Wallace, Jr., a populist-style Democrat and then segregationist, who was running under his own "American Independent Party" label. Wallace won Louisiana's ten electoral votes, and Nixon ran a weak third in the state, losing out even to Democratic national nominee Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey. Charlton Lyons' efforts for Nixon yielded no fruit.

In the 1972 governor's race, Charlton Lyons, who had served as state Republican chairman after his own loss for governor, supported David Treen as his party's gubernatorial candidate. Charlton Lyons was embarrassed because Hall Lyons was running for governor too, not as a Republican primary rival to Treen, but as the projected AIP candidate on the general election ballot. Lyons convinced his son to withdraw so that conservatives could unite behind Republican Treen. This campaign was some nine months before Treen would be elected to Congress in November 1972.

Hall Lyons questioned whether the GOP could be the permanent home of conservatives such as himself. He had grown disillusioned with the Nixon administration even before the Watergate affair triggered a collapse in Republican popularity. He also opposed many of the nationally-know Republican senators, such as Minority Leader Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania, Charles H. Percy of Illinois, and Jacob K. Javits of New York, who had voting records only slightly to the "right" of many Democratic senators.

In the fall of 1972, Hall Lyons emerged as the AIP candidate for the U.S. Senate seat formerly held by Allen J. Ellender. Ellender had died during the Democratic primary campaign, and the nomination, still equivalent to election in Louisiana, went to Shreveport's former state senator J. Bennett Johnston, Jr., who was initially elected to the Louisiana state House on the same day that McKeithen had topped Charlton Lyons. The Republican Senate nominee in 1972 was Ben C. Toledano, who was best known for having lost the mayoral election in 1970 in New Orleans. Moreover, McKeithen, unable to enter the Democratic primary after Ellender's death, filed to run as an independent in the general election.

This time, Hall Lyons did not yield to his father but remained in the Senate campaign even though Toledano was arguably as conservative as Hall Lyons himself. Hall Lyons' total vote was meager: 28,910 votes (2.6 percent). Hall Lyons found that voters would not seriously consider "fringe" candidates for major or even minor offices but would restrict themselves to the major parties. Johnston won the seat, with 598,987 votes (55.2 percent); McKeithen drew 250,161 (23.1 percent), and Toledano finished third with 206,846 (19.1 percent). Toledano's vote was not even as strong as that of Taylor W. O'Hearn of Shreveport, who had unsuccessfully challenged Democrat Russell B. Long in 1962.

Charlton Lyons died on August 8, 1973, and the Lyons family role in Louisiana poltics subsided thereafter.

Hall Lyons not only left his father's political party but also his Episcopal Church. At the time of his death, Hall Lyons was an active member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Houma in Terrebonne Parish.

[edit] Lyons' obituary

Hall Lyons died in Jefferson, Louisiana, in Jefferson Parish after a brief illness. He had been in semi-retirement on Grand Isle in the Gulf of Mexico for a number of years. While Lyons was in Shreveport, he had been active in the musical community. He was a former president of the Shreveport Symphony. He sang numerous principal and supporting roles in operas produced by the symphony. He was an optimistic person with a big smile and a pleasant personality.

Lyons was preceded in death by his first wife, Betty Sue Buffington McKeever (1925-1993). Survivors included his third wife, Rosamond Rosholt Lyons of Grand Isle; they were married on July 31, 1975. He was also survived by his brother, Charlton Havard Lyons, Jr., of Shreveport; three daughters, Marjorie Lyons of Fort Bragg, California (named for her paternal grandmother), Cherlyl Despain of Salt Lake City, and Blythe Randall of Lafayette; three sons, Culver H. Lyons, Sr., of Atlanta, Georgia, Michael Glen Lyons of Humble, Texas, and Troy D. Lyons of Centreville, Mississippi; two stepsons; his second wife, Ann Barras of Lafayette, and a large number of grandchildren.

Services were held at the Mormon Church in Shreveport. Burial was in the Lyons family plot at Forest Park Cemetery in Shreveport. Pallbearers included Lyons' boyhood friend, former Republican State Representative B.F. O'Neal, Jr., (1922-2004), and a son-in-law, Wayne Despain.