James C. Gardner

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For the Republican former U.S. representative and lieutenant governor of North Carolina, see James Carson Gardner.

James Creswell "Jim" Gardner, I (born June 17, 1924), is a retired businessman and a former Democratic mayor of Shreveport, Louisiana, having served a single term from 1954-1958.

Sometimes called Shreveport's "First Citizen," Jim Gardner was still twenty-nine when he was elected mayor and thirty when he assumed the office. His progressive politics in a decade of general conservatism is generally believed to have been a key factor that resulted in his defeat for reelection in 1958 by his predecessor as mayor, fellow Democrat Clyde Edward Fant, Sr., (1905-1973).

Gardner joined the administration of Southwestern Electric Power Company in 1959. He retired as company vice president in 1987. Between 2002 and 2006, he penned a two-volume 800-plus-page autobiography of both a personal and political nature about life in Shreveport during most of the twentieth century and the start of the following century. The work is entitled Jim Gardner and Shreveport (Ritz Publications of Shreveport). Vol. I covers 1924-1958; Vol. II, 1959-2006.

Contents

[edit] Early years and family heritage

Gardner was born in the Schumpert Sanitarium in Shreveport to Arvill Pitt Gardner and the former Marie Creswell. Gardner's maternal grandfather, James Pleasants Creswell, owned the Creswell Hotel in Shreveport. James Creswell's wife died when daughter Marie was an adolescent, and he did not remarry. Father and daughter worked together in the management of the hotel. The hotel was sold long ago. Arvill Gardner, who was born in 1892 in Carroll County, Tennessee, moved to Shreveport in 1914. He perished in a house fire. James Gardner's maternal great-grandmother, Julia Pleasants Creswell, the mother of James Pleasants Creswell, wrote several books about life in the American Civil War era, one called Callamura, an autobiographical novel first published when she and her husband, Judge David Creswell (Gardner's great-grandfather), lived in Greenwood, a Caddo Parish community west of Shreveport. Callamura was republished in 2003, after being found dormant in an Indiana library.

Gardner was also a distant ancestor of Thomas Bibb, the second governor of Alabama, and Pierce Mason Butler, the governor of South Carolina from 1836 to 1838. Julia and David Creswell were married in 1854 at Bibb's Corinthian-column house at Belle Mina in Madison County near Huntsville.

In 1944, while Gardner was in the U.S. Army and before he went overseas during World War II, he married the former Mary Ella Buchanan. They were childhood sweethearts, having met when each was thirteen. They graduated together in 1940 from C.E. Byrd High School in Shreveport. They were twenty at the time of their wedding. Gardner obtained a bachelor's degree in history from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge after the war in 1947. Mary Ella died of cancer in 1976. Two years later, he married the former Mary Ann Welsh (born 1928). She has three children from a previous marriage.

James and Mary Gardner had two children: Ellen Buchanan Gardner Caverlee (born 1946), who is married to the prominent Shreveport attorney Samuel William Caverlee (born 1945), and James Creswell Gardner, II, an oil and gas landman in Shreveport, who is married to the former Sharon Wait (both born 1950). Namesake grandson James Creswell Gardner, III (born 1975), was hence a year old when his grandmother Mary Gardner died. He works in real estate management, CCIM, in New Orleans.

Gardner has four other grandchildren. Megan Elizabeth Gardner (born 1979) is (2006-2007) a student at the Louisiana State University at Shreveport Medical School. Michael Wait Gardner (born 1985), is a senior at LSU in Baton Rouge. John Gardner Caverlee (born 1971) and James B. Caverlee (born 1974) were both valedictorians at their grandparents' Byrd High School. John Caverlee is an accomplished young attorney in the Dallas area. James Caverlee is a Ph.D. candidate in computer science from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.

[edit] The progressive mayor

Gardner had an interest in politics from childhood. Native Shreveporter Stanley Ray Tiner (born 1942), a Pulitzer Prize winner now based in Gulfport, Mississippi, who is also a former editor of the since defunct Shreveport Journal, recounted a tale in a 1982 editorial that Gardner, at the age of five in 1929, came across Governor Huey Pierce Long, Jr., in the First National Bank of Shreveport. "My name is James Creswell Gardner. I voted for you, but my mom and dad didn't," the child supposedly told the startled Louisiana legend.

Gardner saw politics as a means to improve the lives of citizens in the community. He was elected to the legislature when he was 27. He left the legislature after his election as mayor two years later.

In the Gardner administration, Shreveport took the initial steps toward the development of the Red River waterfront and Interstate 20, launched during the administration of U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The interstate system is also named for Eisenhower. There was a large bond program to finance massive overhauls and modernization of the Shreveport water and sewerage systems and streets, substantial urban renewal projects, important annexations, and general civic growth and development.

Though he served only one term as mayor, Gardner is remembered for laying the groundwork for bringing Shreveport into the modern municipal era. Later mayors did not hesitate to call upon Gardner to promote civic issues. He was also designated "Mr. Shreveport."

[edit] Gardner writes his memoirs

For years, Gardner has fought heart disease. He had bypass surgery in 1978 and again in 2006. His physician, Dr. Michael Futtrell told the Shreveport Times that he recommended the surgery because he considers Gardner to be physically younger than his chronological age.

As he recovered from the surgery, Gardner finished his second memoir: "I've felt blessed to have had the mental and physical health to allow me to finish. I have always been blessed with an exceptional memory for details."

The second volume traces Gardner's relationship with the City of Shreveport and examines his personal life since 1959, when he had vacated the mayor's office to Clyde Fant. It covers family, marriages, births, and deaths. It includes Gardner's relationship with such political personalities as U.S. President William Jefferson Blythe "Bill" Clinton, Governors John Julian McKeithen, Edwin Washington Edwards, and Charles Elson "Buddy" Roemer, III, and New Orleans Mayor deLesseps Story "Chep" Morrison, Sr. Fellow "progressive" Mayor Morrison attended Gardner's inauguration on November 9, 1954.

Professionally, Volume II examines Gardner's years as the president of the Chamber of Commerce and his service on the first Shreveport City Council under the mayor-council government, which took effect in 1978, having replaced the previous commission form of government under which Gardner had served as mayor years earlier. Gardner shares his campaign experience, details about his relationship with each of Shreveport's mayors, and an economic outlook on the changes which have occurred in Shreveport over the years.

The volume also offers an intimate look at Gardner's personal life. He discusses Mary' Ella's death and his experience with grief: "One thing I wanted to say to anybody experiencing loss is there is not a set way of handling it. We each handle it in our own way." He also wrote an article for Reader's Digest to explain how he finally managed to cope with the grief of his loss.

Gardner spent some four years writing the memoirs. He considers the books to be an inheritance for his family. Sarah Hudson-Pierce, the owner of Ritz Publications, told the Shreveport Times that the Gardner autobiography is moreover "a gift to Shreveport. He has given the community and future generations a glimpse back to see how Shreveport operated. He has a more comprehensive memory than anyone [else] in the area. He's always been very active and interested in politics..."

[edit] Tiner's analysis of Gardner's leadership

Stanley Tiner, then with the Shreveport Journal, offered his analysis of Gardner's impact on Shreveport when the businessman declined to seek a second four-year term on the city council in 1982:

"Superlatives are used in such profusion these days that they tend to lose much of their impact. For the purpose of my comments I hope you will think of the superlatives used about Jim Gardner with the full value of their meaning. He is clearly Shreveport's 'first citizen'. That truth does not, nor should not diminish any other person, for there are truly others in this community whose contributions have been grand. But Jim Gardner has been a giant in our midst.

"He was the rare combination of theoretician and practitioner. His keen mind developed the ideals to fullness on the frontlines of politics as a legislator, mayor and city councilman. He is a historian, writer, and scholar. He is a devoted husband and father.

"But most of all he has been two things: a thinker and a city's conscience. That fine mind seems to always be alive and vibrant with new thought, new questions, new clarity. It has been the architect of much of the progress of the last three decades in Shreveport. It has been the sounding board against which the ideas of many others have been tested..."

Gardner is a member of the Broadmoor United Methodist Church in Shreveport. Ann Gardner is Presbyterian.

Gardner is a member of the large Shreveport Rotary International and his city's Committee of One Hundred, a civic improvement group.

[edit] References

Preceded by
Edwin Ford Hunter, Jr., (D)		 Member of the Louisiana House of Representatives from Caddo Parish (at-large)
1952–1954		 Succeeded by
Frank Fulco (D)
Preceded by
Clyde Edward Fant, Sr., (D)		 Mayor of Shreveport, Louisiana
1954–1958		 Succeeded by
Clyde Edward Fant, Sr., (D)
Preceded by
New position		 Member of the Shreveport, Louisiana, City Council (District B)
1978–1982		 Succeeded by
Dee Peterson (D)


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