Howard B. Gist Jr.

Howard Battle Gist Jr. (September 17, 1919 - August 19, 2011) was, like his father Howard Sr. and his son Howard "Trey" III, an attorney in his native Alexandria, Louisiana. Prior to 1973, he was the Alexandria city attorney in three mayoral administrations, and like his father, he was a president of the Louisiana Bar Association.
The senior Gist attended public schools in White County and what is now Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia in Clark County in south Arkansas. He worked thereafter in a drug store for ten years to save money to attend the legal department at Tulane University in New Orleans, now the Tulane University Law School, from which he graduated in 1911. He then relocated to Alexandria. In 1917, he became a member of firm of Thornton, Gist & Richey, years later Gist and Methvin. Much of his work dealt with insurance law.
Education and military service
Gist attended public schools in Alexandria and graduated in 1936 from Bolton High School in the Alexandria Garden District. He then attended Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia and graduated from Tulane University with a Bachelor of Arts and then a Juris Doctor from Tulane University School of Law. He was a member of the Kappa Alpha Order.
While still in law school, Gist volunteered for the United States Navy. He obtained a commission through the Naval Communication School at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He reached the rank of lieutenant in the United States Naval Reserve. He was assigned to both the Atlantic and the Pacific Theater of Operations during World War II. He served on the ' and from 1944 to 1945 the '. Gist fought in the recapture of the Philippine Islands in 1944, Iwo Jima, and the Leyte Gulf. Near the end of hostilities, he was transferred to the office of the in Coronado, near San Diego, California. Until his death, Gist maintained an active civil law practice in the fields of medical malpractice defense, workers' compensation, product liability law, banking, and municipal law. He was the Alexandria city attorney under the administrations of Carl B. Close, W. George Bowdon Jr., and Ed Karst. The John K. Snyder administration named three city attorneys in 1973 to succeed Gist: Morris Shapiro (1910-2008), the choice of Mayor Snyder; Howard Nathaniel Nugent Jr. (born 1936), appointee of Streets and Parks Commissioner Malcolm Hebert, and Eugene Paul "Gene" Cicardo Sr. (1933-1996), the selection of Finance and Utilities Commissioner Arnold Jack Rosenthal.
Gist was the attorney, a director, and for sixteen years the chairman of the board of Security First National Bank in Alexandria,
Gist was a fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers and was instrumental in the formation of the Louisiana Association of Defense Attorneys, of which he was subsequently the president. He was a past president of the Alexandria Bar Association He was listed in the original publication of The Best Lawyers in America. In 1969, he was elected to the Council of Louisiana State Law Institute. had six children: Alexandria attorney Howard Battle "Trey" Gist III, Marcie Elizabeth Gist, Mary Stephanie Gist Novakovich, Robert Christopher Gist, Ellen Kyle Gist Scroggs, and William McGowan Gist. Gist is interred at Greenwood Memorial Park in Pineville, Louisiana.

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