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Created page with "{{Infobox officeholder | name=Joseph Howell Flournoy | nationality=American | office= Sheriff of Caddo Parish, Louisiana | party=Democratic Party|D..."
{{Infobox officeholder
| name=Joseph Howell Flournoy
| nationality=[[United States|American]]
| office= [[Sheriff]] of Caddo Parish, [[Louisiana]]
| party=[[Democratic Party|Democrat]]
| term_start=July 1940
| term_end=December 14, 1966
| preceded=Thomas Roland Hughes
| succeeded=James McCormick Goslin, Jr.
| birth_date=October 21, 1891
| death_date=December 14, 1966 (aged 75)
| birth_place=Greenwood, Caddo Parish, Louisiana, USA
| death_place=[[Shreveport]], Louisiana
| resting_place=Forest Park East Cemetery in Shreveport
| occupation=Law-enforcement officer
| spouse=Mary Bridges Flournoy
| children=Georgia Lou Flournoy Hodgson
| religion=[[Presbyterian]]}}
'''Joseph Howell Flournoy''', known as '''J. Howell Flournoy''' (October 21, 1891 – December 14, 1966), was the [[sheriff]] of Caddo Parish based in [[Shreveport]] in far northwestern [[Louisiana]], a position which he held from the summer of 1940 until his death in office twenty-six years later. His tenure as the Caddo Parish sheriff has yet to be surpassed.<ref name=history>{{cite web|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110708111426/http://www.caddohistory.com/historical_facts.html|title=Historical Facts (archived copy)|publisher=Caddohistory.com|accessdate=December 31, 2010)}}</ref>
==Background==
A native of [[rural]] Greenwood in southwestern Caddo Parish,<ref name=lahist>{{cite web|url=http://www.lahistory.org/site23.php|title=Flournoy, J. Howell|publisher=Louisiana Historical Association: ''A Dictionary of Louisiana Biography'' (lahistory.org)|accessdate=December 31, 2010}}</ref> Flournoy was the son of James Pattison "Pat" Flournoy, Sr., the Caddo Parish sheriff from 1906 to 1916, who had previously been the Shreveport municipal auditor, parish tax assessor, and coroner, at a time when medical examiners in Louisiana need not have been physicians.<ref name=cpso>{{cite web|url=http://www.caddohistory.com/caddo_sheriff_template_page_4.html|title=The Beginnings of the Modern Sheriff's Office|publisher=caddohistory.com|accessdate=December 31, 2010}}</ref> Flournoy was the paternal grandson of 19th century Sheriff Alonzo Flournoy.<ref name=history/>
Flournoy was educated in Shrveport publc schools and thereafter attended an unnamed business college. A Louisiana National Guardsman, he was a [[United States Army]] veteran of [[World War I]], with assignment on the [[Mexico|Mexican]] border. He was also as an instructor in a machine gun school at Camp Hancock, [[Georgia]], and was commissioned a lieutenant.<ref name=sjobit>"Sheriff 26 Years – J. H. Flournoy Dies," ''[[Shreveport Journal]]'', December 14, 1966, p. 1.</ref>
==Public career==
At seventeen, Flournoy became a deputy in the Caddo Parish sheriff's department, a position that he held from 1913 to 1928. He was hence a deputy under his father from 1913 to 1916, as were two of his brothers, James Flournoy, Jr., and George A. Flournoy.<ref name=cpso/> From 1928 to 1940, J. Howell Flournoy was a deputy Caddo Parish tax collector. In 1940, Flournoy was elected sheriff to succeed Thomas Roland Hughes (1878-1965) in the same political cycle which brought to the [[governor|governorship]] [[Sam Houston Jones]] (1897-1978) of [[Lake Charles]], who unseated Governor [[Earl Long|Earl Kemp Long]]. Hughes, known for his arrest of the controversial [[Blues music|blues]] musician Lead Belly, had succeeded J. Pat Flournoy as sheriff in 1916. As sheriff, J. Howell Flournoy in 1940 organized the Caddo Parish Selective Service Board and trained an internal security group in Shreveport during [[World War II]]. He spearheaded a measure to establish a pension and relief fund for sheriff's department employees.<ref name=sjobit/> From 1950 until his death, except for one year, Flournoy headed the Louisiana Sheriff's Pension and Relief Fund.<ref name=lahist/>
Flournoy often received commendations for his work in law enforcement from [[J. Edgar Hoover]], director of the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation]]. The defunct ''[[Shreveport Journal]]'' afternoon newspaper referred to Flournoy, accordingly, "A well-known [[conservative]] and a spokesman for patriotism, Sheriff Flournoy spent his entire adult life striving to improve his department in all fields of duty and speaking out against anything or any group which he felt posed a threat to Americanism. The sheriff and his department, ranked among the best and were often copied by other similar law agencies . . . he was also recognized for his well-known work with youth, including his Junior Rifle Program, nationally acclaimed.<ref name=sjobit/><ref>{{cite web|url=http://jeffersonian.name/g1962/G0962.pdf|title=Junior Rifle Clubs – Action, not Words|publisher='[Guns'' ([[magazine]]|date=September 1962|author=Robert Dyment|pages=31, 48|accessdate=September 26, 2014}}</ref>
Flournoy was originally a segregation]]ist though he later hired the first [[African-American]] deputies in Caddo Parish. When state Senator William Monroe "Willie" Rainach (1913-1978) of Claiborne Parish telephoned Flournoy to inform him that one of the African-American deputies had spoken in support of racial integration, Flournoy dismissed the man.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QnQbw5EyPREC&pg=PA210&lpg=PA210 |title=Adam Fairclough, Race and Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915–1972|location=Athens, [[Georgia]] |publisher=[[University of Georgia]] Press|edition=2nd |date=1995 |ISBN=0-8203-3114-7}}</ref> In 1964, Flournoy, a [[Democratic Party|Democrat]], broke party lines to endorse the [[Republican Party|Republican]] [[U.S. Senator]] [[Barry Goldwater]] of [[Arizona]] for the presidency in the [[general election]] against [[Lyndon B. Johnson]]. Joining Flournoy in support of Goldwater, who spoke in Shreveport on September 17, were former Governors Sam Jones and [[Robert F. Kennon]], State Senator Jackson Beauregard Davis of Shreveport, Louisiana Secretary of State Wade Omer Martin, Jr. (1911-1990), Lieutenant Governor Clarence C. "Taddy" Aycock (1915-1987) of Franklin in St. Mary Parish, and the then the long-term [[mayor]] of [[Monroe, Louisiana|Monroe]], William Lorenzo "Jack" Howard (1921-2004).<ref>''Shreveport Journal,'' September 17, 1964 (afternoon paper), p. 1.</ref>
In 1947, Flournoy hired [[Harold M. Terry]] as a deputy, later the manager of the Junior Rifle Program and an expert marksman. Terry himself was sheriff for a single term from 1976 to 1980.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140924045040/http://www.oralhistory.ws/tpl/index3.php?view=profile&client=5031|title=Harold M. Terry |publisher=Oralhistory.ws |accessdate=September 19, 2014|archivedate=September 24, 2014 }}</ref>
In 1952, Flournoy hired George Wendell D'Artois, Sr. (1925-1977) as a deputy sheriff, a post he held for nine years. D'Artois stepped down in 1962 to run successfully for Shreveport public service commissioner, a position abolished in 1978 under the mayor-counciln city charter.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NvpN1t9TMrgC&pg=PA81 |title=Bill Keith, The Commissioner: A True Story of Deceit, Dishonor, and Death |location=Gretna, Louisiana |publisher=Pelican Publishing Company |date=2009 |pages=80–89 |ISBN=9781-58980-655-9}}</ref>
==Personal life and death==
In 1965, Flournoy was named the "Outstanding Conservative of the Year" by the Americanism Forum of Shreveport.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://scripts.lsus.edu/libarchives/tags.php?tag=1999|title=Flournoy, Sheriff J. Howell|publisher=scripts.lsus.edu|accessdate=December 31, 2010}}</ref> He received other honors from the Progressive Men's Club and the American Society of Safety Engineers. Flournoy was affiliated with the American Legion, Lions International, [[Chamber of Commerce]], Order of the Eastern Star, the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, Masonic lodge, and the Shriners, a group which in the late 1920s located one of its children's hospital in Shreveport. He was president of the Caddo Rifle and Pistol Club for a decade from 1956 until his death. He was the first marshal of the Holiday in Dixie festival held each April in Shreveport.<ref name=sjobit/>
Flournoy was married to the former Mary Bridges, a native of Morehouse Parish northeast of Monroe, who moved to Shreveport with her family in 1913.<ref name=sjobit/> The Flournoys had one daughter,<ref name=lahist/> Georgia Lou Flournoy Hodgson, who was living in [[Kuwait]] at the time of her father's death.<ref name=sjobit/>
Flournoy was a member of the First [[Presbyterian]] Church of Shreveport until he helped to organize and then became an elder in the newer Broadmoor Presbyterian Church in the Broadmoor neighborhood.<ref name=lahist/> He resided at 180 Preston Avenue in Broadmoor.<ref>William McCleary, "The Broadmoor Neighborhood: One of Shreveport's Older Communities", ''[[North Louisiana History]]'', Vol. XLII (Winter-Spring 2011), p. 5.</ref>
Flournoy died at Schumpert Hospital in Shreveport of cardiovascular disease at the age of seventy-five.<ref name=lahist/><ref name=sjobit/><ref>''A Dictionary of Louisiana Biography'' uses material for its sketch of Sheriff Flournoy from scrapbooks in the archives at [Louisiana State University in Shreveport, which opened the year after Flournoy's death.</ref> Flournoy and his wife are interred at Forest Park East Cemetery in Shreveport.<ref name=stobit>Flournoy obituary, ''The Shreveport Times'', December 15, 1966, p. 9-A.</ref>
Flournoy had announced two months before his death that he would not seek reelection in 1967. He endorsed as his preferred successor his chief deputy, James McCormick Goslin, Jr. (1915-2001), a Democrat originally from Calhoun in western Ouachita Parish who was reared in [[Ruston, Louisiana|Ruston]] in north Louisiana.<ref name=stobit/> As chief deputy, Goslin served the remainder of Flournoy's term and was then elected sheriff outright in 1967 and again in 1971.
==References==
{{reflist}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Flournoy, J. Howell}}
[[Category:Louisiana People]]
[[Category:Politicians]]
[[Category:Democrats]]
[[Category:Conservatives]]
[[Category:Presbyterians]]
[[Category:United States Army]]
[[Category:World War I]]
| name=Joseph Howell Flournoy
| nationality=[[United States|American]]
| office= [[Sheriff]] of Caddo Parish, [[Louisiana]]
| party=[[Democratic Party|Democrat]]
| term_start=July 1940
| term_end=December 14, 1966
| preceded=Thomas Roland Hughes
| succeeded=James McCormick Goslin, Jr.
| birth_date=October 21, 1891
| death_date=December 14, 1966 (aged 75)
| birth_place=Greenwood, Caddo Parish, Louisiana, USA
| death_place=[[Shreveport]], Louisiana
| resting_place=Forest Park East Cemetery in Shreveport
| occupation=Law-enforcement officer
| spouse=Mary Bridges Flournoy
| children=Georgia Lou Flournoy Hodgson
| religion=[[Presbyterian]]}}
'''Joseph Howell Flournoy''', known as '''J. Howell Flournoy''' (October 21, 1891 – December 14, 1966), was the [[sheriff]] of Caddo Parish based in [[Shreveport]] in far northwestern [[Louisiana]], a position which he held from the summer of 1940 until his death in office twenty-six years later. His tenure as the Caddo Parish sheriff has yet to be surpassed.<ref name=history>{{cite web|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110708111426/http://www.caddohistory.com/historical_facts.html|title=Historical Facts (archived copy)|publisher=Caddohistory.com|accessdate=December 31, 2010)}}</ref>
==Background==
A native of [[rural]] Greenwood in southwestern Caddo Parish,<ref name=lahist>{{cite web|url=http://www.lahistory.org/site23.php|title=Flournoy, J. Howell|publisher=Louisiana Historical Association: ''A Dictionary of Louisiana Biography'' (lahistory.org)|accessdate=December 31, 2010}}</ref> Flournoy was the son of James Pattison "Pat" Flournoy, Sr., the Caddo Parish sheriff from 1906 to 1916, who had previously been the Shreveport municipal auditor, parish tax assessor, and coroner, at a time when medical examiners in Louisiana need not have been physicians.<ref name=cpso>{{cite web|url=http://www.caddohistory.com/caddo_sheriff_template_page_4.html|title=The Beginnings of the Modern Sheriff's Office|publisher=caddohistory.com|accessdate=December 31, 2010}}</ref> Flournoy was the paternal grandson of 19th century Sheriff Alonzo Flournoy.<ref name=history/>
Flournoy was educated in Shrveport publc schools and thereafter attended an unnamed business college. A Louisiana National Guardsman, he was a [[United States Army]] veteran of [[World War I]], with assignment on the [[Mexico|Mexican]] border. He was also as an instructor in a machine gun school at Camp Hancock, [[Georgia]], and was commissioned a lieutenant.<ref name=sjobit>"Sheriff 26 Years – J. H. Flournoy Dies," ''[[Shreveport Journal]]'', December 14, 1966, p. 1.</ref>
==Public career==
At seventeen, Flournoy became a deputy in the Caddo Parish sheriff's department, a position that he held from 1913 to 1928. He was hence a deputy under his father from 1913 to 1916, as were two of his brothers, James Flournoy, Jr., and George A. Flournoy.<ref name=cpso/> From 1928 to 1940, J. Howell Flournoy was a deputy Caddo Parish tax collector. In 1940, Flournoy was elected sheriff to succeed Thomas Roland Hughes (1878-1965) in the same political cycle which brought to the [[governor|governorship]] [[Sam Houston Jones]] (1897-1978) of [[Lake Charles]], who unseated Governor [[Earl Long|Earl Kemp Long]]. Hughes, known for his arrest of the controversial [[Blues music|blues]] musician Lead Belly, had succeeded J. Pat Flournoy as sheriff in 1916. As sheriff, J. Howell Flournoy in 1940 organized the Caddo Parish Selective Service Board and trained an internal security group in Shreveport during [[World War II]]. He spearheaded a measure to establish a pension and relief fund for sheriff's department employees.<ref name=sjobit/> From 1950 until his death, except for one year, Flournoy headed the Louisiana Sheriff's Pension and Relief Fund.<ref name=lahist/>
Flournoy often received commendations for his work in law enforcement from [[J. Edgar Hoover]], director of the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation]]. The defunct ''[[Shreveport Journal]]'' afternoon newspaper referred to Flournoy, accordingly, "A well-known [[conservative]] and a spokesman for patriotism, Sheriff Flournoy spent his entire adult life striving to improve his department in all fields of duty and speaking out against anything or any group which he felt posed a threat to Americanism. The sheriff and his department, ranked among the best and were often copied by other similar law agencies . . . he was also recognized for his well-known work with youth, including his Junior Rifle Program, nationally acclaimed.<ref name=sjobit/><ref>{{cite web|url=http://jeffersonian.name/g1962/G0962.pdf|title=Junior Rifle Clubs – Action, not Words|publisher='[Guns'' ([[magazine]]|date=September 1962|author=Robert Dyment|pages=31, 48|accessdate=September 26, 2014}}</ref>
Flournoy was originally a segregation]]ist though he later hired the first [[African-American]] deputies in Caddo Parish. When state Senator William Monroe "Willie" Rainach (1913-1978) of Claiborne Parish telephoned Flournoy to inform him that one of the African-American deputies had spoken in support of racial integration, Flournoy dismissed the man.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QnQbw5EyPREC&pg=PA210&lpg=PA210 |title=Adam Fairclough, Race and Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915–1972|location=Athens, [[Georgia]] |publisher=[[University of Georgia]] Press|edition=2nd |date=1995 |ISBN=0-8203-3114-7}}</ref> In 1964, Flournoy, a [[Democratic Party|Democrat]], broke party lines to endorse the [[Republican Party|Republican]] [[U.S. Senator]] [[Barry Goldwater]] of [[Arizona]] for the presidency in the [[general election]] against [[Lyndon B. Johnson]]. Joining Flournoy in support of Goldwater, who spoke in Shreveport on September 17, were former Governors Sam Jones and [[Robert F. Kennon]], State Senator Jackson Beauregard Davis of Shreveport, Louisiana Secretary of State Wade Omer Martin, Jr. (1911-1990), Lieutenant Governor Clarence C. "Taddy" Aycock (1915-1987) of Franklin in St. Mary Parish, and the then the long-term [[mayor]] of [[Monroe, Louisiana|Monroe]], William Lorenzo "Jack" Howard (1921-2004).<ref>''Shreveport Journal,'' September 17, 1964 (afternoon paper), p. 1.</ref>
In 1947, Flournoy hired [[Harold M. Terry]] as a deputy, later the manager of the Junior Rifle Program and an expert marksman. Terry himself was sheriff for a single term from 1976 to 1980.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140924045040/http://www.oralhistory.ws/tpl/index3.php?view=profile&client=5031|title=Harold M. Terry |publisher=Oralhistory.ws |accessdate=September 19, 2014|archivedate=September 24, 2014 }}</ref>
In 1952, Flournoy hired George Wendell D'Artois, Sr. (1925-1977) as a deputy sheriff, a post he held for nine years. D'Artois stepped down in 1962 to run successfully for Shreveport public service commissioner, a position abolished in 1978 under the mayor-counciln city charter.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NvpN1t9TMrgC&pg=PA81 |title=Bill Keith, The Commissioner: A True Story of Deceit, Dishonor, and Death |location=Gretna, Louisiana |publisher=Pelican Publishing Company |date=2009 |pages=80–89 |ISBN=9781-58980-655-9}}</ref>
==Personal life and death==
In 1965, Flournoy was named the "Outstanding Conservative of the Year" by the Americanism Forum of Shreveport.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://scripts.lsus.edu/libarchives/tags.php?tag=1999|title=Flournoy, Sheriff J. Howell|publisher=scripts.lsus.edu|accessdate=December 31, 2010}}</ref> He received other honors from the Progressive Men's Club and the American Society of Safety Engineers. Flournoy was affiliated with the American Legion, Lions International, [[Chamber of Commerce]], Order of the Eastern Star, the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, Masonic lodge, and the Shriners, a group which in the late 1920s located one of its children's hospital in Shreveport. He was president of the Caddo Rifle and Pistol Club for a decade from 1956 until his death. He was the first marshal of the Holiday in Dixie festival held each April in Shreveport.<ref name=sjobit/>
Flournoy was married to the former Mary Bridges, a native of Morehouse Parish northeast of Monroe, who moved to Shreveport with her family in 1913.<ref name=sjobit/> The Flournoys had one daughter,<ref name=lahist/> Georgia Lou Flournoy Hodgson, who was living in [[Kuwait]] at the time of her father's death.<ref name=sjobit/>
Flournoy was a member of the First [[Presbyterian]] Church of Shreveport until he helped to organize and then became an elder in the newer Broadmoor Presbyterian Church in the Broadmoor neighborhood.<ref name=lahist/> He resided at 180 Preston Avenue in Broadmoor.<ref>William McCleary, "The Broadmoor Neighborhood: One of Shreveport's Older Communities", ''[[North Louisiana History]]'', Vol. XLII (Winter-Spring 2011), p. 5.</ref>
Flournoy died at Schumpert Hospital in Shreveport of cardiovascular disease at the age of seventy-five.<ref name=lahist/><ref name=sjobit/><ref>''A Dictionary of Louisiana Biography'' uses material for its sketch of Sheriff Flournoy from scrapbooks in the archives at [Louisiana State University in Shreveport, which opened the year after Flournoy's death.</ref> Flournoy and his wife are interred at Forest Park East Cemetery in Shreveport.<ref name=stobit>Flournoy obituary, ''The Shreveport Times'', December 15, 1966, p. 9-A.</ref>
Flournoy had announced two months before his death that he would not seek reelection in 1967. He endorsed as his preferred successor his chief deputy, James McCormick Goslin, Jr. (1915-2001), a Democrat originally from Calhoun in western Ouachita Parish who was reared in [[Ruston, Louisiana|Ruston]] in north Louisiana.<ref name=stobit/> As chief deputy, Goslin served the remainder of Flournoy's term and was then elected sheriff outright in 1967 and again in 1971.
==References==
{{reflist}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Flournoy, J. Howell}}
[[Category:Louisiana People]]
[[Category:Politicians]]
[[Category:Democrats]]
[[Category:Conservatives]]
[[Category:Presbyterians]]
[[Category:United States Army]]
[[Category:World War I]]