When Camelot came to Crowley

Jackie readies to address the crowd of 135,000.

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By Leo Honeycutt
SPECIAL TO THE POST-SIGNAL

Young Democrats Edmund Reggie and Camille Gravel tortured themselves sulking on the noisy floor of the 1956 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Adlai Stevenson had about as much chance to unseat President and World War II hero Dwight Eisenhower as a snowball in hell. Worse still, Governor Earl Long went AWOL at the racetracks but ordered Louisiana’s entire delegation to waste their votes on Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver for vice president.
Alphabetically near the Massachusetts delegation, Bostonians regaled the Louisianans, “If the nation could hear and see our young senator for VP, Stevenson would win.” Within minutes, Reggie and Gravel were in John F. Kennedy’s hotel room mesmerized by his toothy grin and engaging cadence. They campaigned for him wholeheartedly and, though he eventually lost, Kennedy never forgot. “Thanks for your support,” he told Reggie and Gravel. “If I can ever help you, just call me.”
Reggie rang Senator Kennedy’s phone three times, first in 1957 inviting him to the Crowley International Rice Festival. “The what?” Kennedy asked. Reggie explained again in 1958. Finally, in 1959, the fair-haired Boston millionaire told the insistent Crowleyite, “Save your breath, Reggie, I’m coming.”
After a fundraiser at New Orleans’ Roosevelt Hotel, the Kennedy family airplane Caroline landed at Lafayette field mid-morning on Friday, October 16, 1959. John and Jacqueline Kennedy were escorted to a luncheon speech at a civic club then whisked away to Crowley. There, they were shocked at the sea of people. Crowley Police Chief Max Barousse estimated his town swelled from 30,000 to 135,000 to see them. Jackie, only 29, became nervous on a stage built in front of the Acadia Parish Courthouse. “JFK told me, ‘Introduce her,’” remembers Reggie who was emcee. “Jackie said, ‘No, don’t introduce me. Jack, I can’t do it.’ JFK insisted, ‘Introduce her,’ then Camille and Edwin Edwards (Festival president and future governor) said, ‘No, don’t introduce her. Jack, she doesn’t want to speak.’ We’re talking here within 30 seconds and this huge crowd was getting restless. I did what Jack said and she came up there with all that poise. ‘Bonjour, Mesdames et messiers!’ And when she said that –POW!—the top of the city exploded. It was unbelievable.”
“She spoke French fluently, Parisian French, but we all understood her,” recalls former Governor Edwards. “She was brief but able to really turn the crowd on in just a few short seconds.” The future First Lady told the masses in French that, when she was a child, her father explained to her that south Louisiana was like “a small corner of France” and she loved being there. Ear-shattering applause erupted again for blocks.
In the 70-unit parade after Kennedy crowned Houma beauty Judith Ann Haydel as Rice Queen, Cajuns from near and far crowed around the Kennedys’ open convertible more enthralled with Jacqueline than with Jack. Crowley unwittingly became the precursor to their famed Paris trip two years later. If JFK didn’t know it by Crowley, Louisianans confirmed that he and his wife were a potent combination.
But there was far more to the visit than personalities. Without knowing it, Louisiana’s rice capital became Kennedy’s testing ground and the launching pad of JFK for President. His major negative was his Catholicism, something Richard Nixon would use against him in the 1960 race. JFK had to see for himself if, first, he was a viable candidate where being Catholic wasn’t an issue. If working class Louisianans on the other side of the world from Hyannis Port accepted him, changing Protestant minds would be possible. Jack enjoyed Reggie’s Southern hospitality so much, he took his daily swim in the Reggie pool before a reception and press conference that night.
At LeGros Airport south of town, the Crowley High Glee Club serenaded Jack and Jackie before they left again for the heavens. They sang a song written for Jack and finished, cryptically, with “Auld Lang Syne.”
Two short months after Crowley, Kennedy officially announced for the Presidency and would squeak by Nixon to grab the White House with the thinnest margin in history, less than 1%. That was about 113,000 votes, roughly the number of Cajuns who came out of the fields and swamps to vote for the only presidential candidate who ever came to see them.
Though the world will little note, the truth is Camelot started in Crowley.

Leo Honeycutt is the author of Edwin Edwards, Governor of Louisiana: An Authorized Biography set for release this Christmas.