Edmund M. Reggie, Sr. (born July 19, 1926), is a Democratic politician and former city judge from Louisiana. Reggie is originally from the rice-growing city of Crowley, the seat of Acadia Parish, but resides in Lafayette. He still claims that he maintains the record of being the youngest person to serve as a judge in American history. He is one of the most influential and powerful Democrats to have come from the state of Louisiana.
Reggie is married to the former Doris Boustany, the daughter of businessman Frem F. Boustany, Sr. (1903–1993), and the former Beatrice Joseph (1912–1988),[1] who was born in Crowley, reared in Houston, and settled in Lafayette after her marriage. Beatrice Boustany was a cousin of Amin Gemayel, a former president of Lebanon. Reggie's brother-in-law, Frem F. Boustany, Jr., a physician, died two months before his mother, Beatrice.[2]
Reggie was a confidant of former Governor Edwin Washington Edwards, who also began his political career in Crowley.
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Reggie was born in Crowley of Lebanese immigrant parents.[3][4] He received a bachelor's degree from Southwestern Louisiana Institute in Lafayette (now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette) in 1946 and a law degree from the Tulane University Law School in 1949.[5]
Reggie served as acting judge for ailing Crowley City Judge Denis T. Canan, who also was his law partner. When Canan died in 1950, Reggie was appointed by Governor Earl Kemp Long to Canan's seat (fulfilling what was said to be Canan's dying wish). Appointed at the age of 24, he was reputed to be America's youngest judge at that time.[6] Reggie held the post for 25 years, until 1976.[7]
At the 1956 Democratic National Convention, with the Louisiana and Massachusetts state delegations sitting across the aisle from each other, he brokered the delegation's support for Massachusetts senator John F. Kennedy for Vice President (on a ticket with Adlai Stevenson), rather than Senator Estes Kefauver (who was preferred by Louisiana Governor Earl Long)[8]
For the 1960 US Presidential Election, Reggie was a leader in John F. Kennedy's Louisiana campaign, starting with his 1959 invitation of Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, to attend the International Rice Festival in Crowley as honored guests, affording Kennedy the opportunity to address a crowd of 130,000 people.[9] where they were greeted by enthusiastic crowds—the largest JFK addressed prior to his Democratic presidential nomination in July 1960. Reggie was nominated as Presidential Elector in Louisiana for the Democratic ticket of John F. Kennedy-Lyndon B. Johnson, and served as elector when Kennedy won the statewide popular vote. Other Democratic electors that year were Louisiana Attorney General Jack P.F. Gremillion, former U.S. Senator William C. Feazel, former State Senator Frank Burton Ellis of Covington, and Leon Gary of Houma, later director of the Louisiana Department of Public Works.[10]
Following his inauguration, President Kennedy sent Reggie on a 1961 State Department cultural exchange to the Middle East[11] where in Lebanon he was given a hero's welcome in his parents' hometown of Ihden.[12] Reggie continued to serve the president as liaison with Louisiana Governor Jimmie Davis from 1961 until JFK's death in 1963.[13]
In 1968, Judge Reggie was responsible for spearheading Louisiana's Democratic Party in Robert Kennedy's campaign for the President of the United States. During that campaign, Reggie was responsibe for inviting Robert Kennedy to speak at the 1968 International Rice Festival in October of that year, just as Kennedy's brother John had done nine years earlier. As history unfolded, Robert Kennedy was unfortunately assassinated in June 1968, just four months prior to his planned appearance at the International Rice Festival.
In the 1971 Democratic gubernatorial primary, Reggie supported not his Crowley friend, Edwin Washington Edwards, but former Governor Jimmie Davis, one of the more conservative candidates in the crowded field. At the time Reggie erroneously considered Edwards unelectable. The decision hampered their relationship, and the two did not speak for three years."[14]
In 1992, his daughter, Victoria, married U.S. Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts. Reggie’s close relationship with son-in-law Ted Kennedy was evidenced occasionally in the press.[15]
In 1993, Reggie was convicted of misapplication of funds (a felony) and was sentenced to 120 days of home confinement and a $30,000 fine.[16]
In 2004, Reggie was inducted into the Louisiana Political Museum and Hall of Fame in Winnfield, Louisiana.[17]
In May 2008, the Louisiana Department of Culture and Tourism declared the location where JFK delivered his 1959 International Rice Festival speech in Crowley as an area of historical significance, and erected a historical marker.