Jimmy Strain

James Robert Strain, known as Dr. Jimmy Strain (August 28, 1926 – December 30, 1973), was a pediatrician from Shreveport, Louisiana, who served as a Democrat in the Louisiana House of Representatives for a single term from 1968 to 1972, during the second administration of Governor John McKeithen.

Background

Strain was the son of the former Lucy Stewart (1904-1963), a native of Robeline in Natchitoches Parish and the first wife of his father,^[1] the pediatrician/businessman Thomas E. Strain Sr. (1898-1979). The senior Dr. Strain was part of the founding staff of Tri-State Hospital, since Willis-Knighton Medical Center North, and founded the Strain Babies and Children's Clinic, both in Shreveport. Thomas Strain, and his younger son, Jimmy Strain, were developers of the Fountain Towers on Fairfield Avenue in Shreveport. They were in partnership with Virginia Shehee, later a one-term member of the Louisiana State Senate from Caddo Parish.^[2]

Strain's brother, Dr. Thomas E. Strain, Jr. (1924-2015), was born in Dallas, Texas, while their father was a student at the Baylor College of Medicine. The Strains moved to Shreveport in 1926. The brothers practiced pediatrics with their father and^[3] Dr. Dorothy Mack Strain (1928-2009), the wife of Thomas Strain, Jr. A native of Vicksburg, Mississippi, she was reared in Springhill in northern Webster Parish.^[4] Dr. Thomas Strain, Jr., graduate of C. E. Byrd High School in Shreveport and Tulane Medical School in New Orleans, served in the United States Navy during World War II and the United States Air Force in the Korean War.^[3]

Jimmy Strain's wife, the former Dorothy Jane Stahl (1925-1971), a native of Fort Wayne, Indiana, was the mother of their son and three daughters. A registered nurse, she suffered from depression in the last decade of her life and died in Shreveport of a drug overdose at the age of forty-five.^[5] Two-and-a-half years later, Dr. Strain himself took his own life in Jacksonville, Florida.^[6] Dr. Strain and his wife are interred at Forest Park Cemetery West in Shreveport.^[6]

Political life

Strain won election to the state House of Representatives in the general election held on February 6, 1968. The entire Democratic slate swept the state, including Caddo Parish. State Representative Taylor W. O'Hearn of Shreveport, one of the first two Republicans elected to the Louisiana House since Reconstruction era in the United States, was defeated in his bid for a second term at the time Strain was elected.^[7][8] Strain did not seek a second term as state representative. Instead he ran in the last closed primary for governor of Louisiana held on November 6, 1971. He finished last in a field of seventeen candidates with 1,258 votes (0.11 percent).^[9] Victory ultimately went to Democrat Edwin Edwards, who won the first of his four non-consecutive terms in the office.

References