Edwin Edwards has died

Four-term governor Edwin Edwards died Monday peacefully in his Gonzales home. Edwards is a native of Marksville and the longest serving Louisiana governor. He was just shy of his 94th birthday. Last week, Edwards entered Hospice Care.

When his was young, Edwards' mother, Agnes Brouillette, said in an interview with the Avoyelles Journal that when Edwin was a small boy, he would proudly say with some teeth missing "some day I will become Fesident and be in charge of everything."

He would often fondly recall his teachers, Blanche Swan, Therese Michot and others.

Edwards announced his first gubernatorial candidacy while standing on a crate in Marksville.

On Independence Day, Edwards was taken by ambulance to St. Elizabeth Hospital in Gonzales with pain in his right lung, low blood pressure and low blood oxygen level.

Wife Trina Edwards said they went to the hospital "out of an abundance of caution." Tests, including X-rays and CT scans of the lungs, found no cause for immediate concern.

JOHNSON COMMUNITY NATIVE
Edwards is a native of the Johnson Community area outside of Marksville. He was raised in Avoyelles Parish and graduated from Marksville High with long-time friend and political ally Raymond Laborde during World War II.

Edwards joined the U.S. Navy as a pilot in 1944, but Japan surrendered just as his squadron was deploying for combat action.

Edwards' last public appearances in Avoyelles Parish were at Laborde's funeral in January 2016 and at the rededication ceremony when the Avoyelles Correctional Center state prison in Cottonport was renamed Raymond Laborde Correctional Center on Oct. 25, 2016.

He is the state's only four-term governor, serving from 1972-80, 1984-88 and 1992-96. Edwards was the first Catholic governor in the 20th Century and the first of French ancestry. He was also dubbed the "last of the New Deal Democrats."

When he was young, Edwards wanted to be a preacher rather than a politician. He preached at the Marksville Church of the Nazarene.

He is a 1944 graduate of Marksville High School. When he left the Navy, he attended LSU Law School. He graduated in 1949 and began practicing in Crowley, with the intent to take advantage of his being fluent in French in a predominantly French area with very few French-speaking attorneys.

While governor, Edwards hosted a Marksville High Class of ‘44 reunion in the Governor’s Mansion. He has maintained contact with his classmates and family throughout his life.

Edwards’ childhood sweetheart and first wife, Elaine Schwartzenburg Edwards, was also from Marksville.
When he decided to start his law practice in Crowley, Edwards quipped that one reason was "there are too many lawyers in Marksville."

POLITICAL CAREER

He took his first steps into politics when he was elected to the Crowley City Council in 1954. In 1964 he was elected to the state Senate, but remained in that seat for less than two years when he won election to the 7th District congressional seat in a special election in 1965.

He remained in that position until 1972, when he began his first term as governor.

Of all of Edwards' political rivalries over the past half-century, perhaps the one that best characterizes Edwards' style was the one with Republican Dave Treen.

He defeated Treen in his first campaign for governor in the campaign of 1971 and ruined Treen's re-election bid in the 1979 election when he won his third term in office.

One of Edwards' most remembered "burns" was his saying that Treen was "so slow it takes him an hour and a half to watch 60 Minutes." When Treen accused Edwards of talking "out of both sides of your mouth" during a debate in 1983, Edwards came right back by saying he had to do that so "people like you with only half a brain can understand me."

In the 1979 campaign, Treen focused on Edwards' reputation for scandal and corruption. Edwards argued that Treen was incompetent and out of touch with the common people of Louisiana.

Treen played into Edwards' hands by saying it was difficult for him to understand Edwards' popularity. Many took that assessment as proof that Treen really didn't understand Louisiana politics.

FINAL CAMPAIGN

Edwards' last run for office was in 2014, when he finished first in a crowded open primary in the heavily-Republican 6th congressional district but lost in the general election to Republican Garret Graves.