F. Jay Taylor

Foster Jay Taylor, known as F. Jay Taylor (born 1923), is an historian who served from 1962-1987 as the president of Louisiana Tech University in Ruston in Lincoln Parish in north Louisiana. Taylor penned books on the American and the Spanish civil wars.

Early years and academic career

Taylor was born in Gibsland in Bienville Parish. He attended Louisiana Tech for four semesters from 1940-1942. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California at Berkeley. In 1950, he obtained a Master of Arts from Claremont Graduate University, also in California. He was later named to the Claremont Alumni Hall of Fame. He procured his Ph.D. from Tulane University in New Orleans.

Taylor was thirty-nine when he was named as the Louisiana Tech president. He presided over the transformation and expanded enrollment of the institution, founded in 1894 and known prior to 1970 as "Louisiana Polytechnic Institute". Many modern buildings were constructed under his watch, some of which have since been discarded. He was a visible president who spoke before educational and civic groups across the state.

In 1968, Taylor hired Wiley W. Hilburn from Shreveport Times to revamp the Louisiana Tech Journalism Department and make the college newspaper, The Tech Talk, more indicative of student viewpoints.Taylor told Hilburn to "liberate" the college newspaper, which had previously been a non-controversial journal of mostly honor rolls and academic listings and failed to address student issues, such as the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, and the [...] revolution. Hilburn went on to head the journalism department for thirty-one years and to continue to write editorials, columns, and books.

In 1974, Taylor hired Sonja Hogg, then a 28-year-old physical education instructor at Ruston High School, to develop what turned into a nationally successfully women's basketball team. The program began with a $5,000 appropriation, reached the Final Four in 1979, and won the national championship in 1981. Hogg was succeeded as coach of the Lady Techsters by Leon Barmore, whom she had hired from Ruston High School.

Since 1979, Tech has given an annual award in Taylor's name to a successful faculty member engaged in undergraduate teaching duties.There is also an F. Jay Taylor Eminent Scholar Chair of Journalism and an F. Jay Taylor Sports Forum.

Prior to his service at Louisiana Tech, Taylor was the head of the history department and then the dean at Baptist-affiliated Louisiana College in Pineville in Rapides Parish.

Historian

Taylor's Reluctant Rebel: The Secret Diary of Robert Patrick, 1861-1865 stemmed from the translation of a diary written in Pitman shorthand by Patrick, a private in the Confederate Army. A clerk in the commissary and quartermaster departments of the Fourth Louisiana Infantry, Patrick began his diary in April 1861 and wrote until the last days of the conflict.Though the diary was intended only for Patrick's reflections, Taylor was offered the manuscript by Patrick’s niece. Taylor soon determined Patrick to have been a keen observer of events, both military and off-duty. Patrick was present at the 1862 Battle of Shiloh, named for a community church in southwestern Tennessee. He was at the sieges in 1863 of Vicksburg, Mississippi, and Port Hudson, north of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He participated in the retreat from the Battle of Atlanta in Georgia There, Patrick's regiment experienced one of the highest records for casualties in the entire Confederate Army. Patrick was particularly knowledgeable about logistics, supply, and the evaluation of the competence of his superior officers. Patrick’s integrity and writing skill give his diary realism. Though anecdotal, the work is considered a revealing portrait of a soldier in the lower echelons of the Confederate military.Taylor said that Patrick was "very loyal to the South, but he never really understood his role as a Confederate soldier."In 2007, Taylor donated his Civil War artifacts, including the Robert Patrick materials, to the Tech Department of Special Collections, Manuscripts and Archives, a move that Taylor described as "saying goodbye to an old friend."

Taylor's other work is The United States and the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939, with the introduction by the diplomatic historian Claude G. Bowers.

Miscellany

In 1996, Taylor donated $900 to the unsuccessful campaign for the United States House of Representatives waged by now State Senator Francis C. Thompson, a Democrat from Delhi, who lost to the Republican John Cooksey of Monroe.

Taylor has been a board member of First Guaranty Bancshares, Inc., a company previously headed by the Louisiana Tech alumnus Loy F. Weaver, a former Democratic member of the Louisiana House of Representatives from Homer in Claiborne Parish.