Jack Montgomery (Louisiana politician)

Montgomery's former law office sign at 209 Pine Street in Minden; he is now an assistant district attorney for Webster Parish, Louisiana.

John Willard Montgomery, Sr., known as Jack Montgomery (born June 2, 1936), is a retired attorney in the small city of Minden in Webster Parish in northwestern Louisiana, who represented the 36th District in the Louisiana State Senate (Bienville, Bossier, Claiborne, and Webster parishes) for a single four-year term from 1968 to 1972. He unseated incumbent Harold Montgomery (no relation) of Doyline in south Webster Parish in the 1967 Democratic runoff election. Four years later, the conservative Harold Montgomery staged a comeback and narrowly defeated Jack Montgomery, who did not again seek any elected office.

Early years and education

Montgomery was one of five children born to a Springhill couple, Earl W. Montgomery, an employee of International Paper Company, the major employer in northern Webster Parish, and the former Berniece McLeod (1908–2008). His mother was originally from Hamburg in southern Arkansas.^[1] He grew up in the Pine Hills subdivision in Springhill. He played on the 1953 state championship Springhill High School football team. John David Crow, who won the Heisman Trophy in 1957 at Texas A&M University and then had a ten-year professional career with the Chicago and St. Louis Cardinals and the San Francisco 49ers, lived next door to Montgomery and also played on the 1953 championship team. Montgomery's father played on the Bastrop High School championship team in Bastrop in Morehouse Parish in 1927, and Montgomery's son, John, Jr. (born 1963), played football for Minden High School but graduated the year before the team won the state championship in 1982.^[2]

Montgomery entered Tulane University in New Orleans on an athletic scholarship. He was a three-year, two-way starter on the football team and in his senior year was the Green Wave team captain. He was the deputy wing commander of the United States Air Force Reserve Officers' Training Corps at Tulane. He considered becoming an Air Force pilot but was discouraged when told that the enlistment would be five years, rather than three.^[2] He hence procured his law degree from Louisiana State University Law Center in Baton Rouge. He did join the Air Force and spent three years in the Judge Advocate General's Corps. When his tour of duty ended, he returned to his hometown and entered private practice with Roy Fish. He later relocated the practice to Minden in 1972 because it had a more diversified economy than did Springhill.^[2][3]

1967 state Senate campaign

Jack Montgomery entered the race for the state Senate in 1967 to challenge the two-term incumbent Harold Montgomery, who had opposed the administration of popular Governor John McKeithen. Jack challenged Harold over highway construction issues. A Jack Montgomery advertisement asks why Webster Parish was then 20th among 23 North Louisiana parishes in highway funding. Bossier Parish, also part of the senatorial district, fared slightly better at 14th place.^[4]

Jack Montgomery received numerous endorsements in the race and emerged as a significant challenger. McKeithen supported Jack Montgomery;^[5] so did educators John L. Cathcart, former principal of Minden High School and E.S. Richardson Elementary School in Minden, Ed Olive, the principal of Springhill High School, and D.C. Wimberly, also a World War II prisoner of war from Springhill. A.O. Jenkins, then pastor of the large Central Baptist Church in Springhill, supported his parishioner. Others who signed a newspaper statement of support were the merchant A. J. Price, Jr., Springhill Mayor James Allen, and Springhill newspaper publisher Danny Scott (1930–2007).^[3]

Harold led Jack in the first primary, 10,982 to 10,534, but neither had a majority.^[6] Therefore a runoff election was held on December 16. The result was a stunning reversal from the original primary vote. Jack defeated Harold, 10,037 (55.1 percent) to 7,177 (44.9 percent).^[7] In the second round, more than four thousand voters who participated in the first election sat out the contest, and nearly all who failed to vote did so at Harold's expense. Harold Montgomery expressed concern that people were confused over two men named Montgomery running for the office. He quietly sat out the next four years in preparation for a rematch in the 1971 Democratic primary.

In that same runoff, Harold's ideological ally, State Representative Parey Branton of Shongaloo in Webster Parish, defeated former Springhill Mayor Charles E. McConnell to win a third term in the state House, 7,619 (52.6 percent) to 6,857 (47.4 percent). Harold's defeat and Branton's close victory signaled the power of the African American vote in view of passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Most blacks chose Democrats, but the more liberal choices within the party primaries.

Montgomery recalls that McKeithen "liked me and he let me do a lot of things as a young senator. He put me with men like Ernest Morial and E. L. Henry, and we rewrote the state workers' compensation laws."^[2]

Montgomery v. Montgomery again, 1971

As the McKeithen administration lost popularity in its second term, in part by opposition to higher spending reflected in the construction of the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans, Harold Montgomery entered the race once more. Montgomery had failed in first state Senate race in 1956 against Herman "Wimpy" Jones, a Minden restaurant owner. In his scathing advertisement called "Public Feels Cheated", Harold Montgomery decried an assortment of matters that troubled him in Louisiana in 1971, many beyond the purview of the state Senate:

(1) a loss of confidence in government in general

(2) thievery in office

(3) appointment of "political hacks" by the governor

(4) "dope pushers"

(5) "drunk drivers" (before the problem was accented)

(6) "employees who don't work" and

(7) "politicians who continually ask for more money without showing any accomplishment in return."^[8]

Montgomery closed his ad with a prediction of high turnover in the legislative elections of 1971 and 1972, but the changes were mostly within the Democratic Party. Another Democrat, Edwin Washington Edwards, originally from Crowley, with whom Harold had a personal friendship, succeeded McKeithen.

In a campaign ad, Jack Montgomery noted his opposition to gambling, support for vocational education, and aid to the handicapped.^[9]

The 1971 returns narrowly vindicated Harold Montgomery, who dislodged Jack Montgomery, 14,595 (51.2 percent) to 13,889 (48.8 percent). Jack led only in Claiborne Parish, having lost in Bienville, Bossier, and Webster.^[10] Harold Montgomery did not seek a fourth nonconsecutive term in the first ever nonpartisan blanket primary held in Louisiana in November 1975.

John W. Montgomery, Jr.

Jack Montgomery and his wife and childhood sweetheart, the former Carolyn Tucker (born 1940), a 1958 graduate of Springhill High School and Louisiana State University, have two daughters, Elizabeth and Rebecca as well as their son, John, Jr.^[11]

John Montgomery, Jr., graduated In 1985 from the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. Thereafter, John, Jr. was a United States Army airborne ranger infantry officer who later joined the National Guard and served with the 5th Infantry Division. He received his law degree from Tulane Law School in New Orleans. He is an attorney in Quinton^[12] in Greater Richmond, Virginia, and has served on the Varina School Board in suburban Henrico County,^[13]with his wife, Cappie L. Montgomery; the couple has four children.

In 2003, Virginia Democratic Governor Mark Warner, thereafter a U.S. Senator, appointed Montgomery as Virginia's 3rd congressional district member of the board of directors of the state Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. He was also a military aide-de-camp to both Warner and Warner's successor as governor, Timothy M. Kaine, now the other U.S. senator from Virginia. In 2007, Kaine, a Democrat, reappointed Montgomery to the DGIF board.^[13]

In his last years of practice, Montgomery closed his law office at 209 Pine Street in Minden and became an assistant district attorney for Bossier and Webster Parishes under District Attorney Schuyler Marvin.^[2] Jack Montgomery also served for some six months as the interim municipal judge in Minden. In 2007, he was the chairman of the board of Minden Medical Center.

Montgomery attributes his successes in life to "gifts from God. I have achieved nothing on my own."^[2]

References