Harold Montgomery
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A. Harold Montgomery, Sr. (April 19, 1911 -- December 17, 1995) was an agricultural businessman and a Louisiana state senator, who is remembered as an outspoken conservative within his state's dominant Democratic Party. He represented District 36 -- Bossier and Webster parishes and, later, part of Bienville Parish -- in three terms in the Senate, 1960-1968 and 1972-1976.
[edit] Education and business ventures
As with the "S" in Harry S. Truman, the "A" in A. Harold Montgomery stood for nothing. Montgomery was born in Humble, Texas, near Houston in Harris County, to Alley C. Montgomery and Martha Belle Montgomery. He was one of eight children who moved with their parents to tiny Linton, Louisiana, in Bossier Parish in 1921. The Montgomerys then relocated to Benton, the parish seat, so that the children could receive a better education. He graduated from Benton High School, and with the help of a loan from an older sister, he attended the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. He received a bachelor's degree in agriculture. Later, he obtained a master's degree in agriculture from the same institution. He also did graduate work at the University of Colorado in Boulder.
Montgomery taught agriculture at Haughton High School in Bossier Parish to the east of Shreveport. At that time he met Azalee Wilson (1902-1985), the postmistress at Haughton. After three years in Haughton, Montgomery moved to Ruston, where he taught vocational agriculture at Ruston High School in Lincoln Parish. He received many honors for his teaching abilities and his love and dedication for his students. He was also known to paddle recalcitrant boys.
While he was teaching in Ruston, Montgomery became aware that the area needed a feed store to supply his many farmer friends. He used his savings to rent a building on West Mississippi Avenue in Ruston that became "Montgomery's Feed and Seed."
[edit] "Father of the poultry industry" in Louisiana
Montgomery also invested in the mass production of broiler chickens. He understood, when others did not, that the production of poultry could be a money-maker for the farmers of north Louisiana and also provide a more ready market for his feed products. At the time, broiler chickens were produced only in small groups of five hundred or fewer because it was thought that the poultry should not be kept in a chicken house all the time. It was widely believed that the chickens should be let out in a yard for several hours a day to remain healthy. Montgomery realized that placing the chickens in a yard was not economically feasible. So, he raised five thousand birds in an enclosed environment. Montgomery's foresight earned him the title of "father of the poultry industry" in Louisiana.
[edit] Patent on the rotary blade mower
Montgomery renamed his feed and seed store the "Montgomery Distributing Company", when he began to specialize in gasoline lawnmowers.
Montgomery held the first patent on a rotary blade mower. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, mowers were equipped with a rotating reel assembly that was either pushed by hand or was propelled by a small gasoline engine. This kind of mower worked well in short grass, but it clogged up in tall grass. Montgomery did not invent this mower, but he obtained the patent from a frustrated inventor in Chicago. The first commecially produced rotary mower, the Yazoo Master Mower, was then produced by a small manufacturing plant in Jackson, Mississippi. Montgomery was the Louisiana distributor of Yazoo until he closed his lawnmower business in Ruston in 1981.
[edit] Ranch Azalee
Through good management and, in Montgomery's belief, divine guidance, his business flourished, and he was financially able to marry Azalee on Valentine's Day, 1945, after an 11-year courtship. The couple had one child, A. Harold Montgomery, Jr., (born 1946 and known as "Hal".
Montgomery thereafter purchased their dream place, a 1,365-acre farm south of the village of Doyline in Webster Parish. He named the farm "Ranch Azalee" after his beloved wife. The Montgomerys occupied the estate in May 1953. Hal and his wife Linda still live there.
Because his business interests and his legislative duties were a considerable distance from Ranch Azalee, Montgomery drove tens of thousands of miles per year. Such a demanding schedule made him a workhorse. It also made him aware of the need for highway improvements in Louisiana.
[edit] Election to the Louisiana State Senate
Montgomery upset incumbent State Senator Herman "Wimpy" Jones of Minden, the seat of Webster Parish in the 1959 Democratic primary for the District 36 seat in the northwest portion of Louisiana. In his four state senate campaigns (one unsuccessful), Montgomery never faced a Republican opponent. It was said that Montgomery was the "favorite Democrat" of most of the minority of Republicans in his district.
According to Montgomery's obituary in the Shreveport Times, he was indeed "known as a staunch conservative. Fellow conservatives loved him, and even those who disagreed with his views respected him. All who knew him either personally or by reputation respected him for his impeccable veracity, honesty, patriotism, fairness, dedication, and his love of God, family, home, and country."
In the 1959 and 1963 gubernatorial election years, Montgomery, like most of his constituents, opposed the candidacy of fellow Democrat deLesseps Story Morrison, Sr., the mayor of New Orleans and later ambassador to the Organization of American States. Montgomery believed that Morrison, as governor, would work to dismantle the segregated school system still in place in the state even though Morrison was openly committed to maintaining segregation. Montgomery supported State Senator William M. Rainach of neighboring Claiborne Parish in the gubernatorial primary. When Rainach finished third in the balloting, Montgomery, like virtually all of Rainach's supporters, backed former Governor Jimmie Davis in the Democratic runoff. Davis then defeated Morrison and thereafter turned aside Republican Francis Grevemberg in the general election.
In 1963, Montgomery had supported Public Service Commissioner John McKeithen in the Democratic runoff election against Morrison. Then he quietly supported McKeithen's Republican opponent, Charlton H. Lyons, Sr., of Shreveport, in the March 3, 1964, general election. When McKeithen learned that Montgomery, apparently alone among the 39 Democratic state senators, had voted for Lyons, he was furious. Montgomery thereafter disagreed with many of McKeithen's policies and political stands.
In 1962, Montgomery introduced a resolution in the state Senate which condemned the activities of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Louisiana. "We are outraged by the prostitution of the once great FBI, and its present misuse as a political police force, not dissimilar in method and result to the Gestapo or the NKVD," the Soviet secret police. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, not FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, was especially singled out for responsibility. Montgomery admired Hoover for his strongly anticommunist stance.
The next year, Montgomery was elected chairman of the Louisiana Committee for Free Electors, an organization that grew out of a meeting of some 200 conservative Democrats in Baton Rouge. Two representatives from each congressional district were chosen. The free elector movement, however, was abandoned with the nomination of Barry M. Goldwater as the Republican presidential nominee in July 1964, even though many conservative Democrats distrusted Goldwater.
[edit] The battle of the Montgomerys, 1967
In 1967, McKeithen, a prohibitive favorite for renomination and unopposed in the February 6, 1968, general election, supported a then 31-year-old Minden attorney, John Willard "Jack" Montgomery (born 1936, a native of Springhill in northern Webster Parish, in the senatorial primary against Harold Montgomery (no relation). The "battles of the Montgomerys" (There was a rematch in 1971.) were the most heated state senate races in the district in more than a generation. Even the Republican mayor of Minden, Tom Colten, who could not vote in the closed Democratic primary in use at the time, urged his business friends behind-the-scenes to support Jack Montgomery.
In a 1975 interview in Alexandria, Harold Montgomery said that he thought that Colten had done a good job as mayor, but he never understood Colten's favoritism toward Jack Montgomery. Colten had been on cordial terms with Harold Montgomery, who had sometimes voted for Republican candidates, including Goldwater. Jack Montgomery, however, was a most loyal Democrat, who leaned to Harold Montgomery's political left. Jack Montgomery won a close victory in 1967, and Harold Montgomery was forced into political retirement. Harold Montgomery apparently believed that enough voters had mistakenly or carelessly marked their ballots for "Jack" so as to deny Harold victory.
Harold Montgomery's loss, however, was more likely attributed to the impact of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which applied in Louisiana state senate elections for the first time in 1967. Large numbers of previously unregistered black voters came to the polls, and most of those persons chose the McKeithen-endorsed Jack Montgomery. Opposing McKeithen in the primary was segregationist Congressman John Richard Rarick of St. Francisville in West Feliciana Parish. Rarick ran so poorly both statewide and in the Bossier-Webster district that his candidacy was a drag on Harold Montgomery's reelection prospects even though Harold Montgomery concentrated on his own race and could not become active in the gubernatorial primary.
[edit] The battle of the Montgomerys, 1971
In 1971, Harold Montgomery challenged the renomination of State Senator Jack Montgomery in the Democratic primary. In that contest, he would urge voters to support "the Right Montgomery!" Harold Montgomery won the primary rematch and headed back to the state Senate in 1972. He was then allied with newly-elected Governor Edwin Washington Edwards, who had been Montgomery's state senate colleague in 1964 and 1965. Edwards had personally befriended Harold Montgomery, and Montgomery was hence eager to get along with the new governor, considering his earlier differences with McKeithen. Edwards was a pallbearer at Montgomery's funeral; Montgomery died in the last months of Edwards' fourth term as governor.
Hal Montgomery said that his father did not approve of Edwards' flamboyant lifestyle but thought that Edwards was "a great governor who did as much for the state as any other who ever held the office." In the late 1970s, for instance, Louisiana was leading the nation in industrial recruitment. In the 1980s, as the jobs picture improved nationwide, the state economy took a downturn in Louisiana. Some noted that industrial recruitment was most successful when directed by Lieutenant Governor James Edward Fitzmorris, Jr., whose two terms coincided with Edwards' first terms as governor. Still, Fitzmorris had handled industrial recruitment in the David C. Treen administration as well.
Hal Montgomery said that while his father and Jack Montgomery were "not friends" when the 1967 campaign began, they were "not enemies" after Harold Montgomery's return to the state senate. The two rarely were at the same meetings thereafter but were cordial when they met, he said.
Hal Montgomery said that politics was frequently discussed in the Montgomery household when he was growing up in the 1960s, but he never shared his father's interests in political combat and government service. Hal Montgomery still operates the hardware store in Ruston.
[edit] The Religious Right
Harold Montgomery for a time supported the Reverend Billy James Hargis' Christian Crusade radio and college ministry, which operated during the 1960s and 1970s from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Hargis often cited Montgomery by name on his radio broadcasts. A forerunner of what became known as the "Religious Right," Hargis and Montgomery also shared a hostility to communism. Hargis ran into morals allegations, which dampened his ministry in 1976. Hargis's son, Billy James Hargis, Jr., still conducts a reduced version of his father's ministry.
Hargis and Montgomery were also critical of Martin Luther King's perceived leftist ties within the civil rights movement.
By Montgomery's last Senate term, segregation had legally ended, the issue ceased to be a viable political matter, and Montgomery avoided discussion of racial matters. Instead, he concentrated on getting state projects into northwest Louisiana. And it helped to have a friend in the governor's office during Montgomery's last term in office.
[edit] Retiring from the state senate, 1976
Montgomery did not seek a fifth term in November 1975, under the state's newly instituted jungle primary. His senate seat in 1976 was taken by a fellow Democrat far more liberal than Montgomery, Foster L. Campbell, Jr., of Elm Grove in Bossier Parish. Like Montgomery, Campbell is a former educator. He held the seat with little difficulty for seven terms (1976-2002), when he resigned to become one of the five members of the elected Louisiana Public Service Commission.
Montgomery's old seat is currently held by Democrat Robert Adley of Benton. Adley is also a former member of the Louisiana House of Representatives and was a minor gubernatorial candidate in 1995.
[edit] The Southern Methodist Church
For many years, Montgomery loyally supported the First United Methodist Church in Haughton. As United Methodists moved to the theological left, Montgomery helped to organize and to support a theologically conservative Southern Methodist Church in Haughton on Highway 80 east of Bossier City. According to Montgomery's obituary, "his deep conservative philosophy was reflected, not only in his political life, but also in his religious life. Those who knew and love him know that 'he told it like it was.'"
[edit] Montgomery's obituary and legacy
A garrulous, extroverted, "people-type" of person, Montgomery was involved in civic activities: the Webster Parish Cattleman's Association, Masonic lodge, Shriners, and the Minden Lion's Club. He was on the board of the Lincoln Bank and Trust Company of Ruston and the former Peoples Bank and Trust Company, later Hibernia, in Minden.
Montgomery died of heart failure while he was in an advanced stage of Alzheimer's disease. Azalee, who was nine years his senior, had died ten years earlier. At the time of his death, Montgomery had been retired from the state senate for nearly 20 years, yet Edwin Edwards was still governor. Harold and Azalee Montgomery are buried in the Haughton Cemetery in Bossier Parish.
In addition to his son and daughter-in-law, Montgomery was survived by two granddaughters, Leigh Ann and Tara, and three sisters, Audrey Rodes of Benton, Jean Morgan of Lake Charles, and Bobbie Steele of Memphis, Tennessee, and numerous nephews and nieces.
In addition to Governor Edwards, pallbearers included Republican Congressman James O. McCrery, III of Shreveport, former state legislative colleague Parey P. Branton, Sr., a Democrat from Shongaloo in Webster Parish, Minden dairyman R. Don Hinton, Sr., Minden attorney and former Webster Parish Democratic leader Henry Hobbs, and Minden banker Ralph Williams.
The Montgomery obituary defines his legacy as one of "love, honor, integrity, and love to God and country. The state and nation share in this legacy. Harold Montgomery was a true southern gentleman and statesman. . . . He loved his God and his family with a deep and profound love. In addition to his love for his family, he loved his state. This love inspired him to ask the people of his district to elect him to be their state senator. They did so, and he served in this capacity for twelve years . . . with honor and distinction."
The "Harold Montgomery Road" in Doyline was named by the Webster Parish Police Jury (equivalent of county commission in other states) in Montgomery's honor while he was still living. Montgomery favored an "older, finer" America, as he saw it, but was forced to adjust politically and socially to changing times in the Deep South.
Note: Harold Montgomery was not related to the sitting state Representative Billy Montgomery, a Democrat-turned-Republican from Bossier City and Haughton.
[edit] References
Billy Hathorn, interview with Hal Montgomery, Doyline, Louisiana, April 24 and 26, 2006
Billy Hathorn, interview with state Senator A. Harold Montgomery, Sr., May 1975, Alexandria, Louisiana
Arthur McEnany, senior analyst and law librarian of Louisiana Senate, "Membership in the Louisiana Senate, 1880-2004"
Minden Press-Herald, April 1970
New Orleans Times-Picayune, July 4, 1962; May 12, 1963
Glen Jeansonne, Leander Perez of Louisiana, 322-327, for discussion on free elector movement
http://www.jfk-online.com/jpsgblpjg.html
Obituary of Harold Montgomery, Sr., Shreveport Times, December 18, 1995
| Preceded by Herman "Wimpy" Jones (D) |
Louisiana State Senator for the 36th District
A. Harold Montgomery, Sr., (D) |
Succeeded by John W. "Jack" Montgomery (D) |
| Preceded by John W. "Jack" Montgomery (D) |
Louisiana State Senator for the 36th District
A. Harold Montgomery, Sr., (D) |
Succeeded by Foster L. Campbell, Jr., (D) |
Categories: Louisiana State Senators | Louisiana politicians | 1911 births | Businesspeople | 1995 deaths | American Methodists | Methodist politicians | Shriners | Schoolteachers | Bossier Parish, Louisiana | Lincoln Parish, Louisiana | Webster Parish, Louisiana | People from Minden, Louisiana | Segregationists | Ranchers | Educators | Methodists | American conservatives
