Dick Guidry

For the Louisiana advocate of the French language, see Richard Guidry.

Richard P. Guidry, known as Dick Guidry (born September 22, 1929), is a businessman from Galliano, Louisiana, who is a Democrat^[1] former member of the Louisiana House of Representatives from Lafourche Parish. He is considered the youngest member ever elected to the Louisiana House.

On February 1, 2014, Guidry and seven others were inducted into the Louisiana Political Museum and Hall of Fame in Winnfield. In the same ceremony, Guidry's state senate colleague, Harvey Peltier, Jr., of Thibodaux, received posthumous induction.^[2]

The Hall of Fame claims that Guidry was elected to the House by a margin of seventeen votes in 1950, when he was twenty-one. According to the state government listing of legislators, however, a "Richard D. Guidry", not "Richard P. Guidry", served from Lafourche Parish from 1952 to 1956. There is no mention of a special election in 1950 for an aberrant term from 1950-1954, which would have required a special election in 1950, followed by a regular election in 1951, followed by a resignation in 1954. The official records are hence unclear in regard to Guidry's first term in the House. Francis Dugas, a lawyer from Thibodaux, held a House seat from Lafourche Parish from 1956 to 1960. Guidry thereafter took office in May 1964 and left the House permanently in 1976 after three more terms. In the first ever nonpartisan blanket primary held on November 1, 1975, Guidry was either defeated, placed into a runoff election which he then lost, or did not run again. In his last term from 1972 to 1976, he served alongside future U.S. Representative Billy Tauzin of Louisiana's 3rd congressional district and later State Senator Leonard J. Chabert.^[3]

In 2012, at the Former Legislators Day ceremony in the Louisiana State Capitol, Woody Jenkins, owner of the Central City News in Central in East Baton Rouge Parish, photographed many of his former colleagues, including Guidry. The photographs are posted on the Internet.^[4]

In 1970, Representative Guidry obtained designation of the South Louisiana Tidal Water Control Levee District, signed into law that year by Governor John McKeithen. In 1978, the entity was renamed the South Lafourche Levee District. Located in Galliano, the hurricane protection system consists of forty-eight miles of ring levee, 33,400 acres within the flood protection system, six pumping stations, and total acreage of nearly 440,000.^[5]

On April 29, 1975, in a "personal privileges" speech on the floor of the Louisiana House, Guidry decried the communist takeover of the former South Vietnam. He became so outraged over the turn of fortunes against the United States in Southeast Asia that he questioned whether the country could survive until its 300th birthday. Guidry said that voters had the mentality of "an eighteen-year-old". He suggested that actress Jane Fonda and former Black Panthers figure Eldredge Cleaver, before the latter's conversion to conservatism, were "re-gloating and celebrating" the communist triumph.^[6]

Guidry is also known for the Jet Drive-in Theater, located on Louisiana Highway 1 in Cut Off and the Jet Cinema in Galliano. In the 1980's, the Jet Drive-In was closed because of the falling of the screen tower. For years a popular meeting place for young people, the Jet could accommodate five hundred cars, had a screen 150 feet in height, and a snack bar specializing in chili. Guidry also owned several other area theaters; the Jet became so popular that it drove most of his competitors out of business.^[7]

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