Pat Screen

James Patrick Screen, Jr., known as Pat Screen (May 13, 1943 – September 12, 1994),^[1] was a Louisiana State University quarterback from New Orleans, Louisiana, who served as the Democratic Mayor-President of East Baton Rouge Parish from 1981–1988.^[2]

Football

Screen was the son of James P. Screen, Sr. (1914–1994) and Rosemary T. Screen (1921–2002). The senior Screen was residing with his wife in Metairie in Jefferson Parish outside New Orleans at the time of his death, exactly three months after the passing of their son, Pat Screen.^[3]

Pat Screen excelled in football as a high school sophomore at Jesuit High School in New Orleans, where he played in the 1958, 1959, and 1960 seasons, having led his team to state championships. He continued this success at LSU in Baton Rouge, but in 1963, he sustained a separated shoulder in the fourth game against the University of Miami.^[4]

In the 1964 game against LSU's arch-rival Ole Miss, Screen was injured for the contest with a heavily taped knee, but the quarterback managed to hit nine of ten passes in an early 69-yard drive that gave the Tigers a 3-0 lead. In the second quarter, pain force Screen to yield to Billy Ezell. Ultimately, LSU prevailed 10-9 as the result of an unexpected two-point conversion.^[5]

Screen played in the Cotton Bowl on January 1, 1966, in competition with the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, Screen took over for the injured Nelson Stokley and directed the LSU Tigers to a 14–7 upset victory over the heavily favored and second-ranked and unbeaten Razorbacks at the post-season game played in Dallas, Texas.^[6] In 1965, Screen was drafted in the tenth round by the Cleveland Browns.^[7]

Screen, however, did not play professionally but earned an LSU law degree and began his practice in Baton Rouge in 1970. One of his law partners was City Judge Ossie Brown, who was elected East Baton Rouge Parish district attorney in 1972.^[8]

The political arena

In 1980, Screen won the mayoral position, a combined municipal-parish office in Baton Rouge, to succeed the Democratic incumbent, W.W. Dumas of Baker. Reelected in 1984, Screen hired a personal friend, Walter Monsour, a Republican, as his chief administrative officer. The two had first met at a high school football game and renewed their friendship at LSU and continued their association through law school. Monsour, from C.E. Byrd High School in Shreveport, was an LSU cheerleader, a highly prized position. Mansour was considered to have been so successful in alleviating fiscal problems in the second Screen administration that he was brought back to the CAO position two decades later in 2005 by newly elected Democratic Mayor Melvin "Kip" Holden, for whom Monsour had not even voted.^[8]

Having lost the two previous mayor-president elections, Holden in 2004 upset the incumbent Republican Mayor-President Bobby Simpson, Monsour told Holden that he could no longer function as an African American legislator but must act as a mayor for all citizens: "Fine. I want you to do for me what you did for Pat Screen," Holden told Monsour.^[8]

In 1987, Screen and Mary Oliver Pierson, his aide during his first term, were indicted on one count each of malfeasance in the misapplication of road project funds prior to the successful reelection campaign in 1984. Screen and Pierson maintained their innocence. Screen said that he had followed the directions of the city attorney and had no idea what crime could have been committed.^[9] State Attorney General William Guste later dismissed the charges on legal grounds.

Screen did not seek a third term in 1988, when he was succeeded by fellow Democrat and later Republican convert Tom Ed McHugh, a descendant of an old-line family whose earliest members founded the East Baton Rouge city of Zachary.^[10]

Personal life

Screen was considered to have possible statewide political potential, but his outlook was marred by dependence on alcohol and, in his second term, drugs. Mansour said that Screen slowly succumbed to "inner demons".^[8] Screen was found dead from a drug overdose^[11] in 1994 at the age of fifty-one in a New Orleans hotel on the Monday after Labor Day. It was unclear why he was in a New Orleans hotel, for his parents were still living at the time in nearby Metairie.^[3] Two days earlier, LSU had defeated, 44–24, Mississippi State University of Starkville in a game played in Baton Rouge.^[12] At Screen’s funeral, Monsour called his fallen friend, "the most talented, passionate person I ever knew, who, unfortunately, was conflicted."^[8]

Pat Screen and his wife, the former Kathleen Clare McCall (born 1945), had one daughter and two sons; Mary Shannon Screen Beacham (born 1969) of Baton Rouge and James P. Screen, III (born 1970) of Austin, Texas, the husband of the former Danielle Dimisa (born 1972), and Thomas McCall "Tommy" Screen (born 1975) of New Orleans.^[13] Tommy Screen was named in 2008 as the director of the Loyola University Institute of Politics in New Orleans. Tommy Screen is a protégé of former Democratic U.S. Senator John Breaux of Louisiana and the Democratic political activist James Carville. He succeeded Ed Renwick, who had directed the institute for four decades.^[14]

The Roman Catholic Screen is interred at Resthaven Gardens of Memories and Mausoleum in Baton Rouge.^[1]

References