Keith M. Pyburn

Keith M. Pyburn, Sr. (December 21, 1910 – May 22, 1967), was a lawyer and Democratic politician from Shreveport in the northwestern corner of the U.S. state of Louisiana. From 1948 to 1952, during the second administration of Governor Earl Kemp Long, he held one of the then four at-large seats in the Louisiana House of Representatives for Caddo Parish, since under single-member districting.^[1]

Biography

A native of Dodson in Winn Parish in North Louisiana, Pyburn was the youngest of nine children of Dennis Mackey Pyburn (1856-1918) and the former Maggie Helen McBride (1867-1956). His mother was a pioneer settler of north Louisiana, a Baptist, an education graduate of Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana, and a resident of Ruston from 1925 until her death.^[2]

An older brother, Dwight D. Pyburn (1903-1996), the longest-living of the Pyburn children, was from 1966 to 1980 the Caddo Parish clerk of court. Pyburn graduated in 1932 from Louisiana Tech University in Ruston, his city of residence at the time, and in 1936 from the Tulane University Law School in New Orleans. From 1952 until his death, Pyburn had represented the Texas Eastern Transmission Corporation in Washington, D.C. From 1937 to 1952, he was a partner in the Shreveport law firm of Pyburn, Smith and Giddens. He served in the United States Army during World War II and was discharged with the rank of major.^[3]

Pyburn died of a brief illness at Saint Marys Hospital, a division of the Mayo Clinic, in Rochester, Minnesota. His services were held at his former congregation, the First Methodist Church in Shreveport, with the then pastor D. L. Dykes officiating. Interment was at Forest Park East Cemetery. He was survived by his widow, the former Marjorie Owen of Bethesda, Maryland; three sons, all then of Washington, D. C., Dennis M., John O., and Keith M. Pyburn, Jr., three brothers, and two sisters.^[3]

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