C.W. Thompson

Clyde W. Thompson, known as C. W. Thompson (November 9, 1890 – May 30, 1951),^[1] was a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives who served from 1944 until his death in office. He was briefly succeeded as representative by his widow, Lizzie P. Thompson.

Background

Thompson was a native and lifelong resident of Doyline, a village in south Webster Parish near Minden in northwestern Louisiana. He was a farmer and businessman who operated a store and a cotton gin. In 1930, Thompson was elected to the Webster Parish School Board. He became the board president in 1936 and was thereafter president of the Louisiana School Boards Association. He left the school board to take his legislative seat in the spring of 1944. Jimmie H. Davis of Shreveport was the incoming governor.^[2]

The outgoing representative, James E. Bolin, later the district attorney and a district and circuit court judge, was also a Doyline native. Bolin was away with the military in World War II and did not seek re-election to a second term.

Legislative career

Thompson won the position as state representative in 1944 without opposition in the Democratic primary election.^[3] He opposed tax increases and advocated higher teacher salaries, the reduction of the number of school dropouts, the funding of public works, and a hard-surface road for the seventeen miles from Dixie Inn to Cotton Valley, state Highway 371.^[4]

In 1948, Thompson was narrowly reelected to the Louisiana House when by 83 votes he defeated a furniture dealer named George Foster, 3,887 to 3,804.^[5]

In 1950, Thompson joined State Senator Drayton Boucher of Springhill to move through the legislature a $175,000 appropriation to establish a vocational school in Webster Parish, one of the pledges of the 1948 Earl Kemp Long gubernatorial campaign.^[6] The school was thereafter established adjacent to the Griffith Stadium ball park on Constable Street in Minden. Now known as Northwest Louisiana Technical College, it was relocated in 2013 to a new site off the Interstate 20 service road in Minden.

Thompson died in the last year of his second term in the House. Governor Earl Long appointed Mrs. Thompson to finish her husband’s term. She did not seek a full term, and the position was won by E.D. Gleason of the Evergreen Community near Shongaloo in central Webster Parish. Gleason also died in office, and in 1959, Earl Long, in his last term as governor, named Mrs. Gleason to finish her husband’s term under the same circumstances as he had with his designation of Mrs. Thompson eight years earlier.^[3]

The Thompsons are interred at the Doyline Cemetery located on College Street across from the First United Methodist Church. An unnamed infant Thompson is marked in the cemetery by the date July 21, 1926.^[1]

References