Thad Andress

Redden Thaddeus "Thad" Andress, II (Louisiana business, civic, and religious figure)
Born	August 7, 1932 Minden, Louisiana
Died	February 20, 2018 (aged 85) Minden, Louisiana
Spouse	(1) Sarah Elizabeth "Sally" Tatum Andress (married 1959-2001, her death) (2) Oneta Hodson Hancock Andress Children from first marriage: Weston Andress Elizabeth Steedman Laura Beaver Collier Smith Stepchildren from second marriage: Kelly Hancock Allyson H. Kinzel Thirteen grandchildren Parents: Harry Carter and Treeby Miller Andress
Religion	Episcopalian
Military Service
Service/branch	United States Army Guided Missile Battalion Fort Bliss in Texas and New Mexico

Redden Thaddeus Andress, II, known as Thad Andress (August 7, 1932 – February 20, 2018), was a businessman and civic and religious figure in his native Minden, Louisiana.

Background

Andress' family first settled in Minden in the early 1850s. His maternal great-grandfather, Christopher "Chris" Chaffe (1818-1894), migrated in 1853 from his native England to join his brother, John, who had already arrived. A blacksmith, Chris Chaffe became one of the community leaders of early Minden. He operated a stagecoach line that crisscrossed North Louisiana and had the mail contract for most of that territory.

Andress was the oldest of three children of Harry Carter Andress (1903-1980), who was the finance commissioner on the Minden City Council in the 1960s, and the former Treeby Miller (1905-1976). She was named for her mother, Thad's grandmother, Treeby Chaffe (1865-1953), the youngest of the six children of Chris Chaffe and the former Jane Farley (1823-1868). Thad Andress was named for his uncle, Redden Thaddeus Andress, I (1898-1957), Harry Andress' older brother.

Thad Andress was co-valedictorian of the 1950 Minden High School graduating class. He then obtained a Bachelor of Arts in economics in 1954 from Sewanee, officially known as The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, an Episcopalian institution at which he was nominated to Phi Beta Kappa. He later served for six years on the Sewanee trustees. Andress served in the United States Army Guided Missile Battalion at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas. Thereafter, he received his Master of Business Administration degree from Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Community service

After college, Andress returned to Minden in 1958 to become the vice-president and assistant manager of the Ford dealership, Andress Motor Company, Inc. When the dealership was sold in 1965, Andress acquired and operated the R. H. Miller Insurance Company for twenty-nine years, named for his grandfather, Robert Hyneman Miller (1864-1941), cashier of the former Bank of Minden who founded the agency. Thad Andress was a director of Minden Building and Loan Association from 1965 to 1980 and a director and member of the executive committee of the former Minden Bank and Trust Company (now part of Regions Bank) from 1980 to 1999. Since his retirement from the insurance office, he managed his family's timberlands.

Early in his career, Andress was named Minden's "Most Outstanding Young Man" and "Man of the Year". He founded the Boys and Girls Club of Minden, which closed after ten years. When the murder rate in Minden reached fifty in a single year, a considerable number for a small city, he became the chairman of the anti-crime group, the Minden Drug Committee. He was a long-term member of the Minden Lion's International.

A high official in the Episcopal Church, Andress held membership with the St. John's congregation in Minden and served many years on the vestry, as warden, and finance chairman. He was a lector and a deputy to diocesan conventions. For thirteen years, he chaired the diocesan finance committee for the Episcopal Diocese of Western Louisiana. For eight years, he was the chairman of diocesan board of trustees. He was a deputy to the General Convention of the Episcopal Church for eight consecutive conventions over a period of twenty-one years.

Andress worked for the establishment of a museum at 116 Pearl Street in Minden through his role as president of the Dorcheat Historical Association Museum. The museum director, Schelley Brown Francis (born 1959), said that Andress was committed to making "the best small museum possible during his lifetime" and succeeded in the fulfillment of that dream.

With his first wife, the former Sarah Elizabeth "Sally" Tatum (1937-2001), Andress had four children, Weston Andress, Elizabeth Steedman, Laura Beaver, and Collier Smith. After Sally's death, he wed Oneta Hancock (born March 28, 1934), the widow of the Minden physician Charles Hancock. From the second marriage, Andress acquired two step-children, Kendall Hancock and Allyson H. Kinzel.

Thad and Sally Andress are interred with other family members in the historic Minden Cemetery, of which he formerly served on the board. John Agan, the official Webster Parish historian and an instructor at Bossier Parish Community College in Bossier City, whose parents both worked for Andress Motors, said, "We cannot replace Thad, but we can dedicate ourselves to carry on his work of 'doing good things for Minden.'"