W. Scott Wilkinson

This article also contains the biography of W. Scott Wilkinson's daughter, Susybelle Wilkinson Lyons.

William Scott Wilkinson, known as W. Scott Wilkinson (February 5, 1895 – June 19, 1985),^[1] was an attorney in Shreveport, Louisiana, who served a single term as a Democrat from Caddo Parish in the Louisiana House of Representatives from 1920 to 1924 during the administration of Governor John M. Parker.^[2]

Red River Parish background

Wilkinson was born in Coushatta, the parish seat of Red River Parish, south of Shreveport, to John Dallas Wilkinson (1867-1929) and the former Alice Mai Scott (died 1956), the daughter of a judge, Nelson Jackson Scott. His younger sister, Alice Mai Wilkinson, died in 1907 at the age of eleven. He had an older brother, John Pugh Wilkinson. The senior Wilkinson was also an attorney, first in Coushatta and later in Shreveport, and a member of the Louisiana Constitutional Convention in 1898.^[3]

In 1912, Wilkinson graduated from Culver Military Academy in Culver, Indiana. In 1915, he received a Bachelor of Arts from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, where he was president of his senior class. He obtained his law degree in 1917 from Louisiana State University Law Center.^[4]

Military, legal, and political career

Wilkinson served in the United States Army in World War I and again in World War II, during which he reached the rank of colonel.^[5]

While engaged in his legal practice, he was also president of the Shreveport Young Men's Christian Association and the Chamber of Commerce as well as chairman of the board of Dodd College, a private junior college for women founded in Shreveport by the pastor Monroe E. Dodd.^[3] He was a member of Rotary International and the LSU Foundation.^[4]

Wilkinson was affiliated with the state, national, and international bar associations. In 1962, he was inducted into the American College of Trial Lawyers. He was a senior partner in the firm, Wilkinson, Carmody and Gilliam. He was a director and chairman of the board of Lee National Life Insurance Company and the vice president of the Hunter Company. In the late 1950s, he allied with the states rights movement and took a leading role in the court battles regarding tidelands petroleum revenues and opposition to public school desegregation.^[4]

Personal life

On April 9, 1919, Wilkinson married the former Margaret West (1898–1995), the daughter of Charles Stuart West and the former Susan Hardy, then of Corsicana in Navarro County south of Dallas, Texas. She attended St. Mary's College in Dallas, Hollins College in Roanoke, Virginia, and received a Bachelor of Arts years later in 1937 from Centenary College in Shreveport. Margaret Wilkinson was a director of the Shreveport YWCA and the Shreveport Opera and the president of the Twentieth Century Club and the Louisiana Federation of Women's Clubs for the Fourth District.^[3]

The Wilkinsons had two daughters, Susybelle Wilkinson Lyons and Margaret Wilkinson Wilson, formerly Margaret Butler.^[4] Wilkinson died at the age of ninety in 1985 in Shreveport.

Susybelle Wilkinson Lyons
Born	(1923-10-05)October 5, 1923 Shreveport, Caddo Parish Louisiana, USA
Died	July 31, 2007(2007-07-31) (aged 83) Shreveport, Louisiana
Alma mater	Stephens College University of Texas
Occupation	Businesswoman and socialite
Political party	Republican
Religion	Unitarian Universalist Church
Spouse(s)	Divorced from Charlton Havard Lyons, Jr.
Children	Susybelle L. Gosslee Stafford Lyons Charlton H. Lyons, III Sally L. Wood Laurie Wilkinson Lyons Walker Marian L. McGoldrick
Parent(s)	W. Scott Wilkinson Margaret West Wilkinson
Relatives	Charlton Lyons (father-in-law) Hall Lyons (brother-in-law)

Susybelle Wilkinson Lyons

Susybelle Wilkinson Lyons, sometimes known as Duke Lyons^[6] (October 5, 1923 – July 31, 2007), was a socialite, businesswoman, and philanthropist in her native Shreveport, Louisiana, who was particularly active in the Family Violence Program of the Young Women's Christian Association.^[7]

Her early years

Named for her maternal aunt, Susybelle West Church,^[8] Lyons was one of two children of W. Scott and Margaret West Wilkinson. Her paternal grandfather, John Dallas Wilkinson (1867-1929), was like her father a lawyer, a delegate to the Louisiana Constitutional Convention of 1898, and the author of a book on the law and personal injuries. Her maternal great-grandfather, Nelson Jackson Scott, was a judge in Homer in Claiborne Parish in northwestern Louisiana.^[8]

Susybelle Lyons graduated in 1940 from C. E. Byrd High School in Shreveport and then attended Stephens College, a women's institution in Columbia, Missouri.^[9][10][11] She transferred to the University of Texas at Austin, where she was a member of Pi Beta Phi sorority.^[12]

Lyons was the daughter-in-law of Charlton Lyons, often considered the "father" of the revived 20th century Louisiana Republican Party,^[13] and Marjorie Hall Lyons (1895-1971), for whom the theater at United Methodist-affiliated Centenary College in Shreveport is named. In August 1944, at St. Bartholemew's Episcopal Church in New York City, Susybelle Wilkinson married Charlton Havard Lyons, Jr., a graduate of Yale University who was then stationed with the United States Army in Augusta, Georgia. That summer, Susybelle was living on Long Island, where her father, who had been an Army officer in World War I, was a colonel in World War II. The couple first resided in New Orleans, where Lyons, Jr., had been born on December 11, 1921 though he immediately moved with his parents to Shreveport, where he spent the majority of his life. After the war, the junior Lyons attended and graduated from Tulane University Law School. Like his father, he became a Shreveport oilman,^[5] but a political Independent.^[14] Between 1945 and 1956, Charlton and Susybelle had five daughters and one son, but the couple^[5] later divorced.^[12] Susybelle's brother-in-law, Hall McCord Lyons of Lafayette, was the Republican nominee for Louisiana's 3rd congressional district seat in 1966 and subsequently the American Party choice for the United States Senate in 1972.^[15]

Political, business, and philanthropic activities

Susybelle Lyons was herself a delegate to the 1960 Republican National Convention, which met in Chicago to nominate the unsuccessful Nixon-Lodge ticket.^[15] She was a contributor in 2003 and 2004 to the Republican National Committee^[16] and to at least one Democrat, Buddy Roemer, upon Roemer's last election to Louisiana's 4th congressional district seat in 1986.^[17] Roemer subsequently switched parties in 1991 while serving as governor of Louisiana.^[18]

In 1996, Lyons served as the co-chairwoman with Marilyn S. Joiner, the director of marketing and public relations for the Willis-Knighton Health System in Shreveport,^[19] of the YWCA's $1.1 million capital campaign drive.^[7] Lyons was a patron of the arts: the Shreveport Symphony Orchestra, founded in 1948, of which Hall Lyons was once the president;^[20] the Shreveport Opera, which has hosted Beverly Sills and Leontyne Price,^[21] and the Shreveport Little Theater, which dates to 1922. Her mother, Margaret Wilkinson, was also active in the Shreveport YWCA and the Shreveport Opera.^[8]

In 1960, Lyons was a founding member of the Pierremont Oaks Tennis Club, which now offers twenty-one courts, an Olympic-size swimming pool, and full-service dining and lounge facilities.^[22] She was a world traveler, a seamstress, and a gardener.^[12] She was a board member of the foundation of the LSU Health Sciences Center Shreveport^[7] and a donor to the institution.^[23]

An excellent cook, Lyons formerly operated her own restaurant.^[24] In 1990, she was listed as a general partner of Wilkinson Properties Limited, with a mailing address in Memphis, Tennessee.^[25]

Her daughter, Shreveport attorney Laurie Wilkinson Lyons (born April 1954), a Democrat,^[26] told the journalist Margaret Martin of The Shreveport Times that her mother grieved for women who struggle with family violence and opened her home and heart to the needy: "It was not unusual for us to come home and there would be somebody we didn't know. Mama would be consoling them, and they would spend the night, people going through a difficult time in their lives."^[7]

Death of Susybelle Lyons

Lyons died at the age of eighty-three at her 7130 Gilbert Drive residence in Shreveport. After a private burial at Forest Park East Cemetery, a memorial service was held on August 4, 2007, at All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church in Shreveport. In addition to Laurie Lyons and her husband, Henry Clay Walker, IV (born August 1942), Lyons was survived by her five other children and their spouses: Susybelle L. Gosslee (born 1945), the former president of the League of Women Voters chapter in Dallas^[27] and the former wife of John Michael Gosslee;^[6] Stafford Lyons, wife of Henry P. Offermann; Charlton H. Lyons, III, and wife, the former Dianne Lewis; Sally L. Wood, and Marian L. McGoldrick, wife of Bruce Mortin McGoldrick. Her sister, Margaret Wilkinson Wilson (born 1929), formerly Margaret Butler, survived her, as did thirteen grandchildren, and thirteen great-grandchildren.^[12] Her oldest grandchild, John Wilkinson Gosslee of Dallas, died in 2013 of cancer at the age of forty-eight.^[6]

According to her obituary, Lyons "loved the arts, music, and anything beautiful. She loved people and dogs, children and parties, and above all – laughter. Her generosity, sense of humor, and love of life will long be remembered."^[12]

On February 1, 2008, Lyons's heirs held an estate sale at her home. The sale, which included Cartier jewelry and an assortment of unique household items, attracted a large crowd and was covered for The Shreveport Times by the photographer Greg Pearson and Margaret Martin, who wrote numerous articles about Lyons, whom she described as "one of those delightful persons we met through our long career."^[24][28]

References