EDWIN WASHINGTON EDWARDS

Louisiana’s 50th governor, Edwin Washington Edwards, was born on Aug. 7, 1927, and passed on July 12, 2021. He was 93 years old.
Edwards was born in the small community of Johnson seven miles outside Marksville in Avoyelles Parish. His father Clarence was a farmer and his mother Agnes was a midwife credited with nearly 2,000 births. He graduated Marksville High School in 1944 and began his life of public service at 17 when he joined the United States Navy. He became a Navy pilot in California but as his squadron was about to deploy to the Pacific, Japan surrendered and World War II ended. Edwards graduated LSU Law School four years later and married Elaine Schwartzenberg, a classmate at Marksville. They had four children, Anna, Victoria, Stephen and David.
He opened the Edwards Law Firm atop Gremillion’s Drug Store in Crowley in Acadia Parish because his sister, Audrey Edwards Isbell, told him there were more businesses in Crowley. There, the young attorney met lifelong friend B. I. Moody, an accountant, who many times tried to get quick-thinking Edwin to go into business. But Edwards made a name for himself by using his Cajun French to communicate with coastal French Acadians who had oil and gas lands. He brokered fairer deals with energy companies for the Cajuns, many of whom were illiterate.
In 1954, he won his first election as a Crowley city councilman, serving on Louisiana’s first integrated city council. In 1959, he introduced young Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kennedy to festival-goers at the Crowley International Rice Festival. JFK announced for the Democratic nomination for president in 1960.
In 1964, Edwards challenged long-time state Sen. Bill Cleveland and won. When 7th District Congressman T. A. Thompson was killed in an accident in 1965, Edwards won a seat in Congress.
Edwards became part of Louisiana’s powerful delegation headed by Senators Russell Long and Allen Ellender, and Congressmen Hale Boggs, Otto Passman, Joe D. Waggoner, and Speedy Long, and became one of a handful of southern congressmen to vote for the extension of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He also appointed Louisiana’s first black postmaster.
In December 1970, Edwards began a campaign for governor, challenging a field of 18 candidates by mid-1971. Edwards flew his own plane, hopscotching across the state three times faster than road-bound candidates. In the Democratic primary, Edwards defeated J. Bennett Johnston, Gillis Long, and former Gov. Jimmie Davis who had been the favorite to win. In February 1972, he beat Republican David C. Treen to become Louisiana’s 50th governor on May 9, 1972.
Two months later, legendary U.S. Sen. Allen Ellender died and he appointed his wife Elaine. She was sworn in on his birthday, Aug. 7, 1972.
Edwards fulfilled a campaign promise and initiated Louisiana’s first constitutional convention in half a century. During the 1973 legislative session, Edwards beat back oil lobbyists and upped the state’s severance tax on oil from 25-cents a barrel to 12.5% of value.
By the end of his first term, the Public Affairs Research Council applauded Edwards for fulfilling all the reforms PAR had requested.
Edwards passed legislation to shift to a jungle primary in which the top two vote getters would be in a single runoff, no matter what party. This allowed conservative voters and politicians to shift to the Republican Party and, for the first time, still have a chance to win office.
The shift allowed David C. Treen to become Louisiana’s first Republican governor since Reconstruction. But Treen lost by a landslide when Edwin Edwards returned in 1983.
In the 1987 governor’s race, he did not finish first. He conceded the race and essentially made Congressman Buddy Roemer governor. Four years later, Roemer lost to Edwards and former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke, in the primary. Edwards won handily over Duke for his fourth and last term. With that election, Edwards became one of only 11 men in U.S. history to win four gubernatorial terms.
He retired from office in 1996, returned to the Edwards Law Firm and formed business partnerships for many clients.
He married Trina Scott in 2011 in New Orleans. They celebrated the birth of his fifth child, Eli Wallace Edwards, in 2013. Eli will turn 8-years-old on Aug. 1.
Edwards is survived also by his four other children, Anna Edwards, Victoria Edwards, Stephen Edwards and David Edwards and David’s wife, Laura. Also surviving are 12 grandchildren: Douglas Edwards, Scott Hensgens, John Todd Edmond, Dana Edwards Danos (Brannon), Edwin Nolan Edwards (Holly), Stephen Edwards Jr. (Christie), Matthew Edwards, and Allison Edwards, and Christopher Schadt (Lauren), Amanda Edwards Blair (Preston), Kristen Edwards, and Anna Edwards Chandler (Colby).
And 19 great-grandchilden: John Edwards, Grey Edwards, Caroline Hensgens, George Hensgens, Henry Hensgens, Taylor Edmond, Connor Edmond, Sadie and Jolene Danos, Zoe and Nolan Edwards, Theodore and Rose Schadt, Lizzie and Benjamin Moore; Maddox and Coen Chandler; Peyton and Carter Blair.
Edwards will lie in state at Louisiana’s State Capitol on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. The visitation is open to the public. At noon Sunday, his body will be carried on an open, horse-drawn funeral carriage from the State Capitol, down 4th Street to North Boulevard, to Louisiana’s 170-year-old Old State Capitol overlooking the Mississippi River. He will be remembered in a private but streamed and televised funeral service.
“I want everybody to remember that I tried to do as much good for everybody that I could,” he said, “and my hope is that I did. I also hope that those I helped will, in turn, help those around them, too.”