| Jess Carr "Sonny" Gilbert, II | |
|---|---|
| J.C. Gilbert | |
| Louisiana State Senate (Franklin, Richland, and Catahoula parishes) | |
| In office 1960–1972 |
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| Preceded by | Ralph E. King, M.D. |
| Succeeded by | James Harvey "Jim" Brown, Jr. |
| Louisiana House of Representatives District 21 (Catahoula and Concordia parishes) | |
| Preceded by | David I. Patten |
| Succeeded by | Daniel Wesley "Dan" Richey |
| Personal details | |
| Born | March 6, 1922 Wisner in Franklin Parish, Louisiana |
| Political party | Democrat (later Republican convert) |
| Spouse(s) | (1) Barbara June Peck Gilbert (1922–1985), married 1946-1985 (2) Delmar Fulmer Gilbert (died 1999) |
| Children | Barbara Peck Gilbert Haigh J.C. Gilbert, III |
| Religion | Methodist |
| (1) Though he is a member of a pioneer Catahoula Parish family, Gilbert grew up in a boardinghouse operated by his mother, who was widowed at the age of twenty-eight.
(2) In 1972, while he served a full term in the Louisiana House of Representatives, Gilbert was also the director of the Louisiana Wild Life and Fisheries Commission under appointment of Governor Edwin Washington Edwards. |
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Jess Carr "Sonny" Gilbert, II (born March 6, 1922), is a retired cotton farmer and a former Democratic member of both houses of the Louisiana State Legislature from the town of Sicily Island in Catahoula Parish in northeastern Louisiana. Gilbert served three consecutive terms in the Louisiana State Senate from 1960 to 1972, having represented Franklin, Richland, and Catahoula parishes.
In 1972, he was elected for a single four-year term to the Louisiana House of Representatives from newly established District 21 (Catahoula and neighboring Concordia parishes). Gilbert was allied with the anti-Long faction in the legislature. During the 1980s, as a retired lawmaker and a political conservative, Gilbert switched his party registration to Republican.
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As the chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, Gilbert was a vocal defender of agricultural interests. In 1972, Democratic Governor Edwin Washington Edwards appointed him to a six-year term as chairman of the Louisiana Wild Life and Fisheries Commission. The first four years on the commission were served simultaneously with his legislative service. Later, then Republican U.S. Representative Richard Baker of Baton Rouge, who had also served in the state House with Gilbert, named him one of five members of Baker's agricultural advisory committee.
Gilbert was born in Wisner in Franklin Parish to Jess Gilbert, I (1894–1923), and the former Fannie Adams (1895–1976). Jess and Fannie shared an October 27 birthday but a year apart. Fannie was a daughter of William Hughlett Adams, a Franklin Parish sheriff. Gilbert was a great-nephew of former State Senator Thomas Benjamin Gilbert, II (1864–1931), who served from 1904 to 1908 and again from 1916 to 1932. "Sonny" Gilbert's father, Jess Gilbert, I, was a first cousin of Henry Wellman "Harry" Gilbert (1894–1970) of Wisner, a former state senator from Franklin Parish who served from 1932 to 1940. Harry Gilbert was a son of Thomas B. Gilbert.
Jess Gilbert I, died some three weeks before Christmas, 1923, of pneumonia, which he contracted at a hunting camp. "Sonny" Gilbert's mother, hence widowed at twenty-eight, did not remarry. Instead she moved into one of the Gilbert homes in Wisner and, for many years afterwards, operated a boarding house with three meals daily for her clients.
"Sonny" Gilbert graduated from Wisner High School in 1940 and thereafter attended the University of Louisiana at Monroe (then Northeast Junior College before it was expanded to four-year status) and Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. He left LSU and enlisted in the U.S. Army during World War II and served with a B-24 bomber unit in England.
In 1946, after military service, Gilbert married the former Barbara Jane Peck (October 26, 1922 – May 1985) of the Ferry Place Plantation in Sicily Island, the daughter of William Smith Peck, Sr. (1873–1946), and the former Estelle Woodard (1893–1983). It was then that he moved nine miles south from Wisner to Sicily Island in the farming country of eastern Louisiana. Barbara Peck was the sister of Sicily Island civic figures William S. Peck, Jr. (April 12, 1916–February 1987), and Henry C. Peck, Sr. (June 21, 1919–January 24, 2004), a contractor, rancher, farmer, past president of the Sicily Island State Bank, and, from 1946 to 2000, a director of Concordia Bank and Trust Company.[1]
Another future state representative and later state senator, Cecil R. Blair (1916–2001), also grew up in Sicily Island, as the son of a sharecropping family. He represented Rapides Parish in the legislature from the 1950s to the 1970s.
Gilbert was initially elected to the Senate in the 1960 Democratic primary. He unseated the staunchly pro-Long Ralph E. King, a physician from Winnsboro, the seat of Franklin Parish. Gilbert made an issue of nepotism after it was found that King had placed his son on the state payroll, a position often comically referred to as a "dead-head". Gilbert entered the Senate during the administration of Governor James Houston "Jimmie" Davis, who had agricultural interests of his own in northeastern Louisiana.
After three terms, Gilbert left the Senate and was succeeded by future Louisiana Secretary of State and Insurance Commissioner James H. "Jim" Brown of Ferriday in Concordia Parish. In 1971, Gilbert ran for the state House and, in the primary, he unseated the late two-term Representative David I. Patten, a construction company owner in Harrisonburg, the seat of Catahoula Parish.
On February 1, 1972, Gilbert defeated his Republican legislative opponent, Jehu Welton Brabham, I (August 11, 1921 – May 13, 1998). Brabham operated a print shop in Ferriday but later returned to his native Liberty in Amite County near McComb, Mississippi. Brabham drew 42.3 percent of the vote against Gilbert, a larger showing at the time than most GOP candidates polled in lower-tier races in Louisiana.
Gilbert did not seek reelection to the Louisiana House in the first of the state's jungle primaries in 1975. He supported as his successor, the Democrat (later Republican) Daniel Wesley Richey of Ferriday (later Baton Rouge). Gilbert served the remaining two years at Wild Life and Fisheries and then returned to Sicily Island.
Gilbert is twice widowed. His first wife Barbara was one of the few women whose husband ("Sonny" Gilbert), father (W.S. Peck, Sr.) and brother (W. S. Peck, Jr.) were all Louisiana state lawmakers, but not simultaneously. Peck, Sr., served from 1920 to 1928, and Peck, Jr., held the position from 1956 to 1964. In addition, Dr. Henry John Peck (1803–1881), the grandfather of W.S. Peck, Sr., and a plantation owner in Sicily Island, served in the Louisiana Senate for two terms and in the Louisiana House for one term prior to the American Civil War, according to Peck-Gilbert family records. Louisiana state records before the Civil War are too fragmentary to confirm the years of Henry John Peck's tenure.
The Pecks and Gilberts are entombed at Highland Park Mausoleum in Sicily Island. After Barbara's death, "Sonny" Gilbert married the former Delmar Fulmer (1937–1999) of Baton Rouge.
Gilbert has two children, Barbara Peck Gilbert Haigh (born 1948), an English instructor at Copiah-Lincoln Community College Natchez, Mississippi, Campus, and J.C. Gilbert, III (born 1951), a Ph.D. from Michigan State University in Lansing, is professor of rural sociology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Gilbert is a regular donor to the LSU Foundation. He is a member of Rotary International, the American Legion, Farm Bureau, and the Masonic lodge. He is a former president of the National Wild Turkey Federation. He is a former Sunday school superintendent of First United Methodist Church in Sicily Island.
| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Ralph E. King |
Louisiana State Senator from Catahoula, Frankin, and Richland parishes
Jess Carr "Sonny" Gilbert, II |
Succeeded by James Harvey "Jim" Brown, Jr. |
| Preceded by David I. Patten |
Louisiana State Representative from District 21 (Cathoula and Concordia parishes)
Jess Carr "Sonny" Gilbert, II |
Succeeded by Daniel Wesley "Dan" Richey |