Fred L. Schiele

Fred Lyle Schiele, Sr., known also as Buddy Schiele (November 28, 1933–January 24, 2002),^[1] served from 1964–1968 as a United States Democratic Party member of the Louisiana House of Representatives from Concordia Parish ^[2] in the eastern portion of the state adjacent to the Mississippi River. He did not seek reelection in the 1967 primary election but instead unsuccessfully opposed incumbent Sheriff Noah W. Cross. On April 6, 1973, Schiele (pronounced SHE LEE) was appointed sheriff by Governor Edwin Washington Edwards, pending a special election, after Cross was forced to resign after twenty-five years in office because of the failure of the appeal of his federal conviction of perjury.^[3] Edwards settled on Schiele because the two had been legislative colleagues, and Schiele managed Edwards' 1971–1972 gubernatorial campaign in Concordia Parish.^[4]

Schiele was one of four sons born in Vidalia, the parish seat of Concordia Parish, to Catesby Edward Schiele and the former Lucille Rountree (1897–1977). He graduated in 1951 from Vidalia High School. In 1981, at the age of forty-eight, he procured his bachelor’s degree in business administration from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.^[5] Prior to his involvement in politics, Schiele ran a cotton gin in Ferriday, the other principal city of Concordia Parish. He also served on the board of First Federal Savings and Loan in Vidalia.^[4]

In 1954, Schiele married the former Maxine Smith (born July 15, 1937), a 1955 graduate of Vidalia High School. The couple had five children: Fred Schiele, Jr. (born 1955), a former deputy sheriff for his father and the appointed chief of police in Ferriday chief of police, who later entered the trucking business in Dallas; Carole Ann Schiele Rice (born 1960) and Patricia Leigh Schiele (born 1962), both of Loranger in Tangipahoa Parish; Alan Maxwell Schiele (born 1964), a deputy sheriff in East Baton Rouge Parish, and Steven Lowery Schiele, II (born 1975) of Port Vincent, a village in Livingston Parish. Steven is named for Steven Schiele, I, a first cousin who was killed in an automobile accident in 1971. There were also three grandchildren and one great-grandchild.^[6]

Schiele won a full term in the 1975 election, but he was unseated in 1979 by fellow Democrat John Patrick, an insurance agent. He then completed his college degree and was employed thereafter by the Probation and Paroles section of the Louisiana Department of Public Safety. Schiele attempted a comeback in 1987, when he challenged incumbent Sheriff Hubert Lee McGlothin (1940–2004), who had previously been the mayor of Ferriday. In the 1987 contest, Schiele polled 1,155 votes (12.8 percent).^[7] McGlothin resigned midway in his second term as sheriff as a result of a criminal conviction. The Concordia Parish Police Jury, the parish governing body, then appointed Randy Maxwell, effective August 31, 1990, to serve until a special election was held on March 21, 1991. In that all-Democrat contest, Maxwell defeated Schiele, 4,619 (62.9 percent) to 1,900 (25.9 percent). Two other candidates shared the remaining 11.3 percent of the vote.^[8] Maxwell was unopposed in the regular jungle primary for sheriff on October 19, 1991, and has since remained in the position though he has had close elections.^[9]

The probation and paroles division relocated the Schieles to Alexandria, where he died of a massive heart attack at the age of sixty-eight. He was Methodist. After her husband’s death, Mrs. Schiele, a native of Natchez, Mississippi, moved to Loranger to be near her two daughters. Schiele, like Sheriff Cross his predecessor, is buried in the Natchez City Cemetery across the Mississippi River from Vidalia.^[10]

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