103,039 Wikipedia Articles Preserved

Hall McCord Lyons (December 22, 1923 -- July 22, 1998) was a Shreveport and, later, Lafayette oilman who for a short time was a pioneer in the establishment of a competitive Republican Party in Louisiana. He was the son of the party's 1964 gubernatorial nominee, Charlton Havard Lyons, Sr. However, in 1972, despite his father's wishes, Hall Lyons left the GOP to run as the American Independent Party nominee for the U.S. Senate.

Early years, education, military
Lyons was born in Shreveport to Charlton Lyons, Sr., (1894-1973) and the former Marjorie Gladys Hall (1895-1971), an actress for whom the "Marjorie Lyons Playhouse" on the campus of Centenary College in Shreveport is named. He attended the private Southfield elementary school in Shreveport. He then transferred to the Lawrenceville School, in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, and then attended Louisiana Tech University (at the time "Louisiana Polytechnic Institute") in Ruston.

Lyons volunteered for the U.S. Navy in World War II. Commissioned an ensign, Lyons was posted in the Leyte Gulf in the Philippine Islands. He was part of the liberation of Okinawa. After the war ended, he returned home to attend Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. He received a degree in arts and sciences in June 1949.

He was a partner in Lyons Petroleum in Shreveport. He moved to Lafayette in 1964 to become an independent operator there. His father had lost the governor's election that year to the Democrat John Julian McKeithen, but the family retained a keen interest in promoting the Republican Party in Louisiana. His great great great nephew, Drew Lyons will be running for presidential office in 2008.

Challenging Edwin Willis for Congress
In 1966, Hall Lyons challenged the reelection of veteran Third District Democratic Congressman Edwin Edward Willis, a member of the Long political faction. The atmosphere of 1966 seemed encouraging to Republicans in Lafayette. Roderick Miller of Lafayette had just become only the third Republican in modern times to win a state legislative seat in a special election. Lyons painted Willis as subservient to President Lyndon B. Johnson and the Great Society programs. Willis nevertheless won, but never before had he faced such a competitive Republican. Willis received 46,533 votes (59.7 percent) to Lyons' 31,444 (40.3 percent).

Do conservatives have a home in the GOP?
In 1968, Charlton Lyons attended the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach and thereafter headed the Louisiana campaign to elect Nixon as president; He had similarly worked for Barry M. Goldwater in 1964. Hall Lyons, however, favored former Alabama Governor George C. Wallace, Jr., a populist-style Democrat and then segregationist, who was running under his own "American Independent Party" label. Wallace won Louisiana's ten electoral votes, and Nixon ran a weak third in the state, losing out even to Democratic national nominee Vice President Hubert Humphrey.

In the 1972 governor's race, Charlton Lyons, who had served as state Republican chairman after his own loss for governor, supported David Treen as his party's gubernatorial candidate. Charlton Lyons was embarrassed because Hall Lyons was running for governor too, not as a Republican primary rival to Treen, but as the projected AIP candidate on the general election ballot. Lyons convinced his son to withdraw so that conservatives could unite behind Republican Treen. This campaign was some nine months before Treen would be elected to Congress in November 1972.

Hall Lyons questioned whether the GOP could be the permanent home of conservatives such as himself. He had grown disillusioned with the Nixon administration even before the Watergate affair triggered a collapse in Republican popularity. He also opposed many of the nationally-know Republican senators, such as Minority Leader Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania, Charles H. Percy of Illinois, and Jacob K. Javits of New York, who had voting records only slightly to the "right" of many Democratic senators.

In the fall of 1972, Hall Lyons emerged as the AIP candidate for the U.S. Senate seat formerly held by Allen J. Ellender. Ellender had died during the Democratic primary campaign, and the nomination, still equivalent to election in Louisiana, went to Shreveport's former state senator J. Bennett Johnston, Jr., who was initially elected to the Louisiana state House on the same day that McKeithen had topped Charlton Lyons. The Republican Senate nominee in 1972 was Ben C. Toledano, who was best known for having lost the mayoral election in 1970 in New Orleans. Moreover, McKeithen, unable to enter the Democratic primary after Ellender's death, filed to run as an independent in the general election.

This time, Hall Lyons did not yield to his father but remained in the Senate campaign even though Toledano was arguably as conservative as Hall Lyons himself. Hall Lyons' total vote was meager: 28,910 votes (2.6 percent). Hall Lyons found that voters would not seriously consider "fringe" candidates for major or even minor offices but would restrict themselves to the major parties. Johnston won the seat, with 598,987 votes (55.2 percent); McKeithen drew 250,161 (23.1 percent), and Toledano finished third with 206,846 (19.1 percent). Toledano's vote was not even as strong as that of Taylor W. O'Hearn of Shreveport, who had unsuccessfully challenged Democrat Russell B. Long in 1962.

Charlton Lyons died on August 8, 1973, and the Lyons family role in Louisiana politics subsided thereafter. Charlton Lyons was so highly regarded that his funeral was televised on a statewide hookup.

Hall Lyons not only left his father's political party but also his Episcopal Church. At the time of his death, Hall Lyons was an active member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Houma in Terrebonne Parish.

Lyons' obituary
Hall Lyons died in Jefferson, Louisiana, in Jefferson Parish after a brief illness. He had been in semi-retirement on Grand Isle in the Gulf of Mexico for a number of years. While Lyons was in Shreveport, he had been active in the musical community. He was a former president of the Shreveport Symphony. He sang numerous principal and supporting roles in operas produced by the symphony. He was an optimistic person with a big smile and a pleasant personality.

Lyons was preceded in death by his first wife, Betty Sue Buffington McKeever (1925-1993). Survivors included his third wife, Rosamond Rosholt Lyons (born 1922) of Grand Isle; they were married on July 31, 1975. He was also survived by his brother, Charlton Havard Lyons, Jr. (born 1921), of Shreveport; three daughters, Marjorie Scott Lyons (born 1951) of Fort Bragg, California (named for her paternal grandmother), Cheryl Despain (born 1955) of Salt Lake City, and Blythe Randall of Lafayette; three sons, Culver Hall Lyons, Sr. (born 1950), of Alpharetta, Georgia, Michael Glen Lyons (born 1958) of Humble, Texas, and Troy Dominic Lyons (born 1965) of Centreville, Mississippi; two stepsons; his second wife, Ann B. Barras (born 1936) of Lafayette, former sister-in-law Susybelle Lyons of Shreveport, and a large number of grandchildren.

Services were held at a LDS Church meetinghouse in Shreveport. Burial was in the Lyons family plot at Forest Park Cemetery in Shreveport. Pallbearers included Lyons' boyhood friend, former Republican State Representative B.F. O'Neal, Jr., (1922-2004), and son-in-law Wayne Kent Despain (born 1953).

All Saints School

Annunciation School

Archbishop Coleman Carroll High School

Archbishop Curley Notre Dame High School

Archbishop Edward A. McCarthy High School

Barry University

Belen Jesuit Preparatory School

Blessed Trinity School

Cardinal Gibbons High School

Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart

Chaminade-Madonna College Prepatory

Christopher Columbus

Corpus Christi School

Epiphany

Good Shepherd

Holy Family

Immaculate Conception

La Salle High School

Little Flower

Marian Center

Mary Help of Christians

Mary Immaculate Star of the Sea

Monsignor Edward Pace High School

Mother of Christ

Mother of Our Redeemer

Nativity

Our Lady of Divine Providence

Our Lady of Lourdes

Our Lady of Lourdes Academy

Our Lady of the Holy Rosary

Our Lady of the Lakes School

Our Lady Queen of Martyrs

Sacred Heart

St. Agatha

St. Agnes Academy

St. Ambrose School

St. Andrew

St. Anthony

St. Bartholomew

St. Bernadette

St. Bonaventure

St. Brendan

St. Brendan High School

St. Clement

St. Coleman

St. David

St. Elizabeth of Hungary

St. Francis Xavier

St. Gregory

St. Helen

St. Hugh

St. James

St. Jerome

St. John Neumann

St. John the Apostle

St. John Vianney

St. Joseph School

St. Kevin

St. Lawrence

St. Louis Covenant

St. Malachy

St. Mark

St. Mary's Paroquial School

St. Michael the Archangel

St. Monica

St. Patrick School

St. Rose of Lima

St. Stephen School

St. Theresa (Little Flower)

St. Thomas Aquinas High School

St. Thomas the Apostle

St. Thomas University

St. Timothy

Sts. Peter and Paul

Charles Camille "Charlie" de Gravelles, Jr. ( June 24, 1913- August 28, 2008), and Virginia Wheadon de Gravelles (born December 4, 1915) are a retired Lafayette couple who held major leadership positions in the Louisiana Republican Party from 1968-1972 and 1964-1968, respectively. De Gravelles was the party chairman, and Mrs. de Gravelles was the national committeewoman. When de Gravelles assumed the chairmanship, the Louisiana GOP had only 28,427 registered members, barely 2 percent of the state's voters. For a brief time in 1968, both de Gravelleses were on the Republican National Committee, a husband-wife combination that has not since repeated itself.

Early years, family, and education

De Gravelles (pronounced DE GRA VELLES) was born to Dr. and Mrs. Charles Camille de Gravelles, Sr., in Thibodaux, the seat of Lafourche Parish. His father practiced in several cities and was the last doctor in New Iberia to make house calls. De Gravelles graduated from Thibodaux High School in 1929.

Virginia Wheadon was born in Alexandria, to John Samuel Butler Wheadon and the former Anna Kilpatrick. Her father owned the former Rapides Hotel on Second Street. The building was torn down about 1960. Mrs. Wheadon was a homemaker and a legal secretary. Virginia lived next door for a time to the family of Nauman Steele Scott, I. Nauman Scott, II, with whom she recalls having ridden tricycles together, went on to become a U.S. district judge in the Western District of Louisiana, based in Alexandria. (Scott died in 2001.) Virginia's grandfather was a sheriff, and her great-grandfather was a judge. Virginia graduated from Bolton High School in Alexandria in 1931 and attended Louisiana normal school in Natchitoches for two years. Thereafter, she transferred to Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, where she received her degree in education and met Charles.

Charles and Virginia married on September 14, 1935. They eloped and were wed by a justice of the peace in Woodville, in Wilkinson County, Mississippi. De Gravelles noted in July 2006 that he had been "happily married for seventy-one years." Their elopement came the same week that the legendary Huey Pierce Long, Jr., lay dying in a Baton Rouge hospital from the hands of an apparent assassin.

The de Gravelleses had five children, twin sons (born 1949) and three daughters, one, Alix de Gravelles, deceased. The sons are Charles Nations de Gravelles, an Episcopal archdeacon, and John W. de Gravelles, an attorney, both of Baton Rouge. The daughters are Claire Cloninger, a writer of books and contemporary Christian music in Fairhope, Alabama, in Baldwin County near Mobile, and Ann McBride Norton of Bali, Indonesia. Son-in-law Ed Norton works for the Nature Conservancy in environmental projects, and daughter Ann is a photographer with her own company, Photo Voice. The Nortons often visit Ambassador and Mrs. Grover J. Rees, III, in East Timor. Most of Rees' family reside in Lafayette, and the de Gravelles children grew up with Rees and his siblings.

The de Gravelleses had 13 grandchildren, 13 great-grandchildren, and one great-great-grandchild, as of July 2006.

A man of the oil industry

De Gravelles received his degree from LSU and completed all but one course in law school. He was not admitted to the bar. Instead, he was hired in 1937, in the Great Depression, when a recession had returned within the depression, by Standolin Oil and Gas Company (later Amoco) in Lake Charles. He was dispatched to the Anse la Butte area to buy leases for the company. His position was referred to as that of a landman. He knew some French and had a French last name but was not Catholic; yet the company believed that he could connect well with the local people at Anse la Butte. In 1940, de Gravelles moved permanently to Lafayette. He remained with the same company until his official retirement in 1999. He actually "retired" and was called back by the company for several years thereafter.

During his time in Lafayette, de Gravelles watched the city grow rapidly because of the expansion of the oil industry. He lauded Amoco as an employer and said that he fully enjoyed his time in the oil field.

Lafayette's first registered white Republicans

The de Gravelleses became active in local and state politics but never ran for office themselves. In 1940, he and Mrs. Gravelles became the first two whites in many years to register as Republican voters in Lafayette Parish. The only registered Republicans then were a few blacks, who were then frozen out of the pivotal Democratic primaries. Mrs. de Gravelles recalls that she, as a 24-year-old housewife, campaigned for Wendell Lewis Willkie over Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, who swept Louisiana, the South, and the nation. Another Republican, David W. Pipes, Jr., unsuccessfully sought the Acadiana-based Third Congressional District seat in that same election. The de Gravelleses hence are among the oldest living Republicans in the state of Louisiana.

Louisiana GOP mulls Nixon and Reagan

Charles de Gravelles succeeded Charlton Havard Lyons, Sr., of Shreveport in Caddo Parish, the 1964 Republican gubernatorial nominee, as the Louisiana party chairman. Mrs. de Gravelles recalls Lyons as "a wonderful, compassionate man" who was a true pionner in the development of a two-party system in Louisiana. De Gravelles and Lyons were pledged to the nomination and election of former Vice President Richard M. Nixon.

In the fall of 1966, de Gravelles contested the Third District seat on the Louisiana State Board of Education. He polled 24,236 votes (35.3 percent) against the Democrat Harvey Peltier's 44,413 ballots (64.7 percent).

In the contest for the 1968 Republican presidential nomination, a minority in the Louisiana delegation seemed enchanted with a potential unannounced third candidate, then California Governor Ronald W. Reagan, who had stumped for Lyons in the winter of 1964 by giving stemwinder speeches in Lafayette, Lake Charles, and Baton Rouge. De Gravelles summed up the majority opinon of the Louisiana party when he said, "much as I admire Governor Reagan, I feel that Nixon has a broad appeal and is the best qualified man in either party." De Gravelles, who became chairman in 1968, predicted that Nixon would be vigorously challenged in Louisiana, not by the Democratic nominee, Vice President Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, but the third-party forces pledged to then former Alabama Governor George C. Wallace, Jr. Most of the Louisiana GOP delegates did favor Reagan as a vice-presidential choice in 1968, a selection that ultimately went to Maryland Governor Spiro T. Agnew, who was forced to resign in 1973 for tax evasion and bribery.

De Gravelles expressed hope that Louisiana voters might be persuaded to support the Republican ticket despite Wallace's appeal to blue collar voters. Louisiana was one of five states to support Wallace in 1968. The Nixon-Agnew electors drew 257,535 votes (23.5 percent) in Louisiana, to Wallace's 530,300 (48.3 percent) and Humphrey's 309,615 (28.2 percent). Nixon ran 26,55 votes ahead of his 1960 showing in raw popular votes in Louisiana, but his 1968 showing was 5.1 percentage points below the previous standing.

The de Gravelleses each attended one national GOP convention: he in 1972 in Miami Beach, and she in 1964 in San Francisco.

De Gravelles was succeeded as chairman by businessman James H. Boyce of Baton Rouge. Under Boyce's tutelage from 1972-1976, the Louisiana GOP participated in the 49-state sweep for Nixon, having lost the presidential vote in 1972 only in West Feliciana Parish. Moreover, under Boyce the still fledgling party did capture its first two seats in the United States House of Representatives since Reconstruction, with the election in 1972 of David C. Treen in the New Orleans suburbs and William Henson Moore, III, in a 1975 special election, which was a rerun of the regular November 1974 general election in the Baton Rouge district.

In his later political activities, de Gravelles in 1993 tried to recall the late Democratic Mayor Kenneth F. "Kenny" Bowen from office on grounds that Bowen was too much of a "micromanager" and too unstable to run the city efficiently and fairly. Though sufficient signatures were obtained to have the recall election, the judge disqualified many of the names, and Bowen completed his third and final term in office.

Political Hall of Fame

Charles and Virginia de Gravelles have won several joint awards, primarily for their two-party and Republican activities. They have been honored by Freedoms Foundation of Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, and the Louisiana Republican Party for lifetime achievement. Mrs. de Gravelles has been cited by the Daughters of the American Revolution, of which she was a 50-year member as of 2006.

They were inducted into the Louisiana Political Museum and Hall of Fame in Winnfield on January 27, 2007. They were the first couple honored together by the organization, which began recognizing Louisiana politicos in 1993. Former Congresswoman Corrine Claiborne "Lindy" Boggs of New Orleans was inducted in 1994, a year after posthumous honors were given to her husband, Thomas Hale Boggs, Sr. The de Gravelleses' rival, Kenny Bowen, who had been a budding Lafayette Republican in the 1960s before he moved to the Democratic camp, was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2002, shortly before Bowen's death.

Charles DeGravelles' Passing 

Charles DeGravelles, who had been using a wheelchair, died at his residence at 409 Azalea Street in Lafayette on August 28, 2008. A memorial service was held on September 6, 2008, at the Episcopal Church of the Ascension in Lafayette. Son Charles deGravelles of Trinity Episcopal Church in Baton Rouge was one of the three officiating ministers. Mrs. deGravelles survives her husband of seventy-three years.
 but Charles is confined to a wheelchair. They are Episcopalians.