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Created page with "{{Infobox pfficeholder |name Erle Edwards Barham |office=Louisiana State Senator for District 33 (East Carroll, Morehouse, Richland, and West Carroll parishes) |term..."
{{Infobox pfficeholder
|name Erle Edwards Barham
|office=[[Louisiana]] State Senator for District 33 (East Carroll, Morehouse, Richland, and West Carroll parishes)
|term_start=1976
|term_end=1980
|preceded=Charles M. Brown
|succeeded=David "Bo" Ginn
|birth_date=July 10, 1937
|birth_place=Place of birth missing
|death_date=October 17, 2014 (aged 77)
|death_cause=Crash of his small plane
|death_place=While airborne en route to medical attention in [[Shreveport]], Louisiana
|resting_place=Episcopal Church of the Redeemer Cemetery in Oak Ridge in Morehouse Parish
|spouse= Bennie Faye Berry Barham
|children=Ben Edwards Barham, II (deceased)<br>
Erle West Barham<br>
Amy Barham Westbrook<br>
Robert Berry Barham
|relations=[[Robert J. Barham]] (brother)
|party= [[Republican Party|Republican]]
|alma_mater=Oak Ridge High School<br>
[[Louisiana State University]]<br>
[[University of Louisiana at Monroe]]
|occupation= [[Farmer]] and [[business]]man
|residence=Oak Ridge, Louisiana
|religion=[[Episcopalian]]<br>
'''Note''':<br>
*Both former state Senator Edwards Barham and his father, Erle "Ninety" Barham, perished in small aircraft crashes - thirty-eight years apart.<br>
*Barham was the first [[Republican Party|Republican]] elected to the Louisiana State Senate since [[Reconstruction]].
}}
'''Erle Edwards Barham'', known as '''Edwards Barham''' (July 10, 1937 – October 17, 2014,) was an [[United States|American]] [[business]]man, [[farmer]], and conservationist from Oak Ridge, a [[village]] in Morehouse Parish in northeastern [[Louisiana]]. He was the first [[Republican Party|Republican]] elected — by a 29-vote margin — to the Louisiana State Senate since the era of [[Reconstruction|Reconstruction]]. Barham represented the agricultural District 33 from 1976 to 1980. Barham was narrowly unseated in the 1979 nonpartisan blanket[[ primary]] by a [[Democratic Party|Democrat]], David "Bo" Ginn of Bastrop, who held the seat until 1988.<ref>David 'Bo' Ginn announced his candidacy in 1987 for Louisiana Secretary of State but withdrew from that race, and victory went to then Democrat, later Republican convert, Walter Fox McKeithen (1946-2005).</ref>
==Background==
Barham was born to Erle McKoin "Ninety" Barham (1916–1976), a Louisiana native, and the former Rosalie Smith (1913–1999), originally from [[Missouri]]. He graduated in 1955 from Oak Ridge High School and received a bachelor's degree from [[Louisiana State University]] in [[Baton Rouge]], where he was a member of Sigma Chi] fraternity. He subsequently obtained a master's degree in [[ornithology]] from the [[University of Louisiana at Monroe]] (then Northeast Louisiana State College).<ref name=obit/> In the early 1970s, [[U.S. President]] [[Richard M. Nixon]] named Barham to head a [[White House]] conservation initiative.<ref name=farmandfowl/>
Until his death, Barham was married to the former Bennie Faye Berry (born September 1935). There are three living Barham children. These include youngest son Robert Berry Barham (born October 1971) and his wife, Camille Robichaux Barham, and their children, Graham Edwards Barham, Bailey Anne McKoin Barham, and Robert Collier Barham, and daughter Amy Barham Westbrook and her husband, Scott Hamilton Westbrook (both born January 1962), and their daughters, Margaret Benjamin Westbrook and Anna Claire Swearingen Westbrook.<ref name=benebobit/>
Another son, Erle West Barham (born 1964), known as West, farms a large area about the family's Ingleside Plantation in Leflore and Carroll counties in [[Mississippi]]. West Barham, as he is known, claims residences in Sidon and Greenwood, Mississippi. He grows cotton, rice, corn, and soybeans. He is married to the former Trudy Bridges (born 1963), and the couple has two children, Laten Edwards Barham and Nathaniel West Barham. West Barham is also a conservationist who has made a name for himself trying to preserve the habitat and survival of the bobtail [[quail]]. He is sometimes called the "quail man." The conservationist thrust of the family was actually set by the senior Erle Barham. There is a wildlife refuge on Barham properties in Morehouse Parish near the parish seat of Bastrop, and the Tensas Wildlife Refuge near Delhi in Richland Parish came to fruition with the help of the senior Barham.<ref name=farmandfowl>{{cite web|url=http://deltafarmpress.com/mag/farming_farming_fowl_go/index.html|title=Farming and fowl can go together|date=January 23, 2004|author=Eva Ann Dorris|publisher=''Delta Farm Press'' (Pontotoc, Mississippi)|accessdate=October 20, 2014}}</ref>
On September 18, 1976, Erle "Ninety" Barham was killed in the crash of the light plane that he was piloting near Oak Ridge. Barham and four friends were returning to Morehouse Parish from Baton Rouge, where they had attended the 1976 [[football]] game between LSU and [[Oregon State University]] at Corvallis. Barham and three of the men were killed, but another, John S. Barr, III, survived.<ref>Erle M. Barham obituary, ''The Monroe News-Star,'' September 20, 1976.</ref>
==Political life==
On February 6, 1968, Barham ran unsuccessfully in a race for state representative. He polled 44 percent as the Republican nominee and the third candidate in a two-seat district. The winners were the Democrats T. T. Fields and James Peyton Smith. In that election, all 105 state House seats were won by Democrats.<ref>''Monroe News-Star,'' February 7, 1968.</ref>
In the 1975 Senate election, Barham campaigned extensively and narrowly prevailed, 14,499 (50.1 percent) to Democratic candidate L. B. "Buddy" Loftin's 14,470 ballots (49.9 percent). The district then encompassed Morehouse, Richland, West Carroll and East Carroll parishes to the north and east of [[Monroe, Louisiana|Monroe]].
In his 1979 defeat, Barham did not benefit from any [[governor|gubernatorial]] coat-tail effect. The four parishes in the district largely split their votes between victorious Republican candidate [[David C. Treen]] and his Democratic opponent, state Senator [[Louis Lambert]] of Baton Rouge.<ref>''[[Shreveport Journal]],'' October 29, 1979.</ref> However, eight years earlier, Treen in defeat had won most of those same northeast parishes by comfortable margins in his first race against [[Edwin Edwards]]. Had Treen had run stronger in the 33rd Senate district, his party may have held on to its single state Senate seat.
Edwards Barham technically was not the first Louisiana Republican state senator of the modern era. A. C. Clemons, Jr., of Jennings]] in Jefferson later as a full-term elected senator. When Edwards Barham was defeated, there were no Republicans in the state Senate for the following term.
Edwards Barham's former seat was later held by his younger brother, [[Robert J. Barham]]. Another Barham brother is Thomas West Barham (born November 1939), also of Oak Ridge. Robert Barham was first elected to the state Senate as a Democrat in a [[special election]] in 1994.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://staticresults.sos.la.gov/11081994/11081994_MultiParish.html|title=Official Election Results: 11/8/1994|publisher=[[Louisiana Secretary of State]]|accessdate=October 20, 2014}}</ref> He was reelected as a Democrat with a 93 percent margin to a full term in 1995 and unopposed in 1999. Thereafter, he switched to Republican affiliation and won reelection again without opposition in 2003. Meanwhile, he ran unsuccessfully for Louisiana's 5th congressional district seat in the 2002 primary.<ref>Louisiana Secretary of State, Election Returns (Legislative), November 5, 2002.</ref>
Edwards and Robert Barham were distant cousins of Louisiana Supreme Court Justice [[Mack Barham|Mack Elwin Barham]], who was originally from Bastrop. They were also cousins of Democratic State Senator [[Charles C. Barham]], who represented an adjoining district based about [[Ruston, Louisiana|Ruston]] from 1964 to 1972 and 1976 to 1988.<ref>"Senate to consider honor for Barham", ''The Baton Rouge Advocate,'' May 5, 2010.</ref><ref>It is unclear how Erle "Ninety" Barham was related to [[C. E. "Cap" Barham]], the Louisiana lieutenant governor from 1952 to 1956] and the father of state Senator Charles Barham.</ref>
After leaving the state Senate, Edwards Barham continued to support Republican candidates, including [[Rodney Alexander]], former representative of Louisiana's 5th congressional district, who first won the seat as a Democrat when Edwards Barham's brother, Robert Barham, ran in the primary but failed to secure a general election berth. In 2004, Alexander switched to the Republican Party and went on to defeat a fellow Republican, [[Jock Scott]] of [[Alexandria, Louisiana|Alexandria]].
==Educational and civic activities==
Years after his legislative career, Barham was appointed to the board of supervisors of the Louisiana Technical and Community Colleges by Republican former Governor [[Mike Foster|Murphy James "Mike" Foster, Jr.]] The term ended in July 2005. Earlier, Barham served on the Louisiana Board of Regents and the board of supervisors of the University of Louisiana System. He held the chairmanship of all three of those boards, the only person yet to have done so.<ref name=obit/>
Barham was a member of the Louisiana Cotton Producers Association and the Northeast Louisiana Rice Growers Association. He was a former director of the Bank of Oak Ridge, a former commissioner of Morehouse General Hospital, a past president of the Morehouse Parish chapter of the [[American Farm Bureau Federation]], and a past member and president of the Oak Ridge Lions International. He was a member of the Masonic lodge. He served as the treasurer of the [[Episcopal]] Church of the Redeemer in Oak Ridge.<ref name=obit>{{cite web|url=http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/thenewsstar/obituary.aspx?n=erle-edwards-barham&pid=172869276&fhid=20705|title=Erle Edwards Barham|publisher=''Monroe News-Star''|accessdate=October 20, 2014}}</ref>
==Death==
Like his father, Edwards Barham died in a plane crash. On October 17, 2014, Barham, a certified flight instructor, was taxiing back to the hangar after a flight at Rayville Municipal Airport in Richland Parish when his Beechcraft Bonanza aircraft struck a perimeter fence. He died airborne en route to [[Shreveport]] for medical attention.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.knoe.com/story/26818644/former-state-senator-edwards-barham-dies-in-plane-crash|title=Former state Senator Edwards Barham dies in place crash|publisher=KNOE-TV|accessdate=October 20, 2014}}</ref>
Ben Edwards Barham, II, the oldest of the four children of Edwards and Bennie Barham, died at the age of fifty-five less than a month after his father's death. He too was a farmer, pilot, outdoorsman, and Episcopalian. He and his wife of thirty-eight years, the former Bonnie Dry, have two daughters: Stacy Barham Walker and Lydia Barham Acey and her husband, Justin Acey, and six grandchildren.<ref name=benebobit>{{cite web|url=http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/thenewsstar/obituary.aspx?n=ben-edwards-barham&pid=173140738&fhid=20705|title=Ben Edwards Barham obituary (1959-2014)|publisher=''Monroe News-Star''|accessdate=November 13, 2014}}</ref>
==References==
{{reflist}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Barham, Edwards}}
[[Category:Louisiana People]]
[[Category:Business People]]
[[Category:Farmers]]
[[Category:Politicians]]
[[Category:State Senators]]
[[Category:Republicans]]
[[Category:Episcopalians]]
|name Erle Edwards Barham
|office=[[Louisiana]] State Senator for District 33 (East Carroll, Morehouse, Richland, and West Carroll parishes)
|term_start=1976
|term_end=1980
|preceded=Charles M. Brown
|succeeded=David "Bo" Ginn
|birth_date=July 10, 1937
|birth_place=Place of birth missing
|death_date=October 17, 2014 (aged 77)
|death_cause=Crash of his small plane
|death_place=While airborne en route to medical attention in [[Shreveport]], Louisiana
|resting_place=Episcopal Church of the Redeemer Cemetery in Oak Ridge in Morehouse Parish
|spouse= Bennie Faye Berry Barham
|children=Ben Edwards Barham, II (deceased)<br>
Erle West Barham<br>
Amy Barham Westbrook<br>
Robert Berry Barham
|relations=[[Robert J. Barham]] (brother)
|party= [[Republican Party|Republican]]
|alma_mater=Oak Ridge High School<br>
[[Louisiana State University]]<br>
[[University of Louisiana at Monroe]]
|occupation= [[Farmer]] and [[business]]man
|residence=Oak Ridge, Louisiana
|religion=[[Episcopalian]]<br>
'''Note''':<br>
*Both former state Senator Edwards Barham and his father, Erle "Ninety" Barham, perished in small aircraft crashes - thirty-eight years apart.<br>
*Barham was the first [[Republican Party|Republican]] elected to the Louisiana State Senate since [[Reconstruction]].
}}
'''Erle Edwards Barham'', known as '''Edwards Barham''' (July 10, 1937 – October 17, 2014,) was an [[United States|American]] [[business]]man, [[farmer]], and conservationist from Oak Ridge, a [[village]] in Morehouse Parish in northeastern [[Louisiana]]. He was the first [[Republican Party|Republican]] elected — by a 29-vote margin — to the Louisiana State Senate since the era of [[Reconstruction|Reconstruction]]. Barham represented the agricultural District 33 from 1976 to 1980. Barham was narrowly unseated in the 1979 nonpartisan blanket[[ primary]] by a [[Democratic Party|Democrat]], David "Bo" Ginn of Bastrop, who held the seat until 1988.<ref>David 'Bo' Ginn announced his candidacy in 1987 for Louisiana Secretary of State but withdrew from that race, and victory went to then Democrat, later Republican convert, Walter Fox McKeithen (1946-2005).</ref>
==Background==
Barham was born to Erle McKoin "Ninety" Barham (1916–1976), a Louisiana native, and the former Rosalie Smith (1913–1999), originally from [[Missouri]]. He graduated in 1955 from Oak Ridge High School and received a bachelor's degree from [[Louisiana State University]] in [[Baton Rouge]], where he was a member of Sigma Chi] fraternity. He subsequently obtained a master's degree in [[ornithology]] from the [[University of Louisiana at Monroe]] (then Northeast Louisiana State College).<ref name=obit/> In the early 1970s, [[U.S. President]] [[Richard M. Nixon]] named Barham to head a [[White House]] conservation initiative.<ref name=farmandfowl/>
Until his death, Barham was married to the former Bennie Faye Berry (born September 1935). There are three living Barham children. These include youngest son Robert Berry Barham (born October 1971) and his wife, Camille Robichaux Barham, and their children, Graham Edwards Barham, Bailey Anne McKoin Barham, and Robert Collier Barham, and daughter Amy Barham Westbrook and her husband, Scott Hamilton Westbrook (both born January 1962), and their daughters, Margaret Benjamin Westbrook and Anna Claire Swearingen Westbrook.<ref name=benebobit/>
Another son, Erle West Barham (born 1964), known as West, farms a large area about the family's Ingleside Plantation in Leflore and Carroll counties in [[Mississippi]]. West Barham, as he is known, claims residences in Sidon and Greenwood, Mississippi. He grows cotton, rice, corn, and soybeans. He is married to the former Trudy Bridges (born 1963), and the couple has two children, Laten Edwards Barham and Nathaniel West Barham. West Barham is also a conservationist who has made a name for himself trying to preserve the habitat and survival of the bobtail [[quail]]. He is sometimes called the "quail man." The conservationist thrust of the family was actually set by the senior Erle Barham. There is a wildlife refuge on Barham properties in Morehouse Parish near the parish seat of Bastrop, and the Tensas Wildlife Refuge near Delhi in Richland Parish came to fruition with the help of the senior Barham.<ref name=farmandfowl>{{cite web|url=http://deltafarmpress.com/mag/farming_farming_fowl_go/index.html|title=Farming and fowl can go together|date=January 23, 2004|author=Eva Ann Dorris|publisher=''Delta Farm Press'' (Pontotoc, Mississippi)|accessdate=October 20, 2014}}</ref>
On September 18, 1976, Erle "Ninety" Barham was killed in the crash of the light plane that he was piloting near Oak Ridge. Barham and four friends were returning to Morehouse Parish from Baton Rouge, where they had attended the 1976 [[football]] game between LSU and [[Oregon State University]] at Corvallis. Barham and three of the men were killed, but another, John S. Barr, III, survived.<ref>Erle M. Barham obituary, ''The Monroe News-Star,'' September 20, 1976.</ref>
==Political life==
On February 6, 1968, Barham ran unsuccessfully in a race for state representative. He polled 44 percent as the Republican nominee and the third candidate in a two-seat district. The winners were the Democrats T. T. Fields and James Peyton Smith. In that election, all 105 state House seats were won by Democrats.<ref>''Monroe News-Star,'' February 7, 1968.</ref>
In the 1975 Senate election, Barham campaigned extensively and narrowly prevailed, 14,499 (50.1 percent) to Democratic candidate L. B. "Buddy" Loftin's 14,470 ballots (49.9 percent). The district then encompassed Morehouse, Richland, West Carroll and East Carroll parishes to the north and east of [[Monroe, Louisiana|Monroe]].
In his 1979 defeat, Barham did not benefit from any [[governor|gubernatorial]] coat-tail effect. The four parishes in the district largely split their votes between victorious Republican candidate [[David C. Treen]] and his Democratic opponent, state Senator [[Louis Lambert]] of Baton Rouge.<ref>''[[Shreveport Journal]],'' October 29, 1979.</ref> However, eight years earlier, Treen in defeat had won most of those same northeast parishes by comfortable margins in his first race against [[Edwin Edwards]]. Had Treen had run stronger in the 33rd Senate district, his party may have held on to its single state Senate seat.
Edwards Barham technically was not the first Louisiana Republican state senator of the modern era. A. C. Clemons, Jr., of Jennings]] in Jefferson later as a full-term elected senator. When Edwards Barham was defeated, there were no Republicans in the state Senate for the following term.
Edwards Barham's former seat was later held by his younger brother, [[Robert J. Barham]]. Another Barham brother is Thomas West Barham (born November 1939), also of Oak Ridge. Robert Barham was first elected to the state Senate as a Democrat in a [[special election]] in 1994.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://staticresults.sos.la.gov/11081994/11081994_MultiParish.html|title=Official Election Results: 11/8/1994|publisher=[[Louisiana Secretary of State]]|accessdate=October 20, 2014}}</ref> He was reelected as a Democrat with a 93 percent margin to a full term in 1995 and unopposed in 1999. Thereafter, he switched to Republican affiliation and won reelection again without opposition in 2003. Meanwhile, he ran unsuccessfully for Louisiana's 5th congressional district seat in the 2002 primary.<ref>Louisiana Secretary of State, Election Returns (Legislative), November 5, 2002.</ref>
Edwards and Robert Barham were distant cousins of Louisiana Supreme Court Justice [[Mack Barham|Mack Elwin Barham]], who was originally from Bastrop. They were also cousins of Democratic State Senator [[Charles C. Barham]], who represented an adjoining district based about [[Ruston, Louisiana|Ruston]] from 1964 to 1972 and 1976 to 1988.<ref>"Senate to consider honor for Barham", ''The Baton Rouge Advocate,'' May 5, 2010.</ref><ref>It is unclear how Erle "Ninety" Barham was related to [[C. E. "Cap" Barham]], the Louisiana lieutenant governor from 1952 to 1956] and the father of state Senator Charles Barham.</ref>
After leaving the state Senate, Edwards Barham continued to support Republican candidates, including [[Rodney Alexander]], former representative of Louisiana's 5th congressional district, who first won the seat as a Democrat when Edwards Barham's brother, Robert Barham, ran in the primary but failed to secure a general election berth. In 2004, Alexander switched to the Republican Party and went on to defeat a fellow Republican, [[Jock Scott]] of [[Alexandria, Louisiana|Alexandria]].
==Educational and civic activities==
Years after his legislative career, Barham was appointed to the board of supervisors of the Louisiana Technical and Community Colleges by Republican former Governor [[Mike Foster|Murphy James "Mike" Foster, Jr.]] The term ended in July 2005. Earlier, Barham served on the Louisiana Board of Regents and the board of supervisors of the University of Louisiana System. He held the chairmanship of all three of those boards, the only person yet to have done so.<ref name=obit/>
Barham was a member of the Louisiana Cotton Producers Association and the Northeast Louisiana Rice Growers Association. He was a former director of the Bank of Oak Ridge, a former commissioner of Morehouse General Hospital, a past president of the Morehouse Parish chapter of the [[American Farm Bureau Federation]], and a past member and president of the Oak Ridge Lions International. He was a member of the Masonic lodge. He served as the treasurer of the [[Episcopal]] Church of the Redeemer in Oak Ridge.<ref name=obit>{{cite web|url=http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/thenewsstar/obituary.aspx?n=erle-edwards-barham&pid=172869276&fhid=20705|title=Erle Edwards Barham|publisher=''Monroe News-Star''|accessdate=October 20, 2014}}</ref>
==Death==
Like his father, Edwards Barham died in a plane crash. On October 17, 2014, Barham, a certified flight instructor, was taxiing back to the hangar after a flight at Rayville Municipal Airport in Richland Parish when his Beechcraft Bonanza aircraft struck a perimeter fence. He died airborne en route to [[Shreveport]] for medical attention.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.knoe.com/story/26818644/former-state-senator-edwards-barham-dies-in-plane-crash|title=Former state Senator Edwards Barham dies in place crash|publisher=KNOE-TV|accessdate=October 20, 2014}}</ref>
Ben Edwards Barham, II, the oldest of the four children of Edwards and Bennie Barham, died at the age of fifty-five less than a month after his father's death. He too was a farmer, pilot, outdoorsman, and Episcopalian. He and his wife of thirty-eight years, the former Bonnie Dry, have two daughters: Stacy Barham Walker and Lydia Barham Acey and her husband, Justin Acey, and six grandchildren.<ref name=benebobit>{{cite web|url=http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/thenewsstar/obituary.aspx?n=ben-edwards-barham&pid=173140738&fhid=20705|title=Ben Edwards Barham obituary (1959-2014)|publisher=''Monroe News-Star''|accessdate=November 13, 2014}}</ref>
==References==
{{reflist}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Barham, Edwards}}
[[Category:Louisiana People]]
[[Category:Business People]]
[[Category:Farmers]]
[[Category:Politicians]]
[[Category:State Senators]]
[[Category:Republicans]]
[[Category:Episcopalians]]