Shreveport is a city in the U.S. state of Louisiana. It is the most populous city in the Shreveport-Bossier City metropolitan area. Shreveport ranks third in population in Louisiana after New Orleans and Baton Rouge and 133rd in the U.S. The bulk of Shreveport is in Caddo Parish, of which it is the parish seat. Shreveport extends along the west bank of the Red River into neighboring Bossier Parish. The population of Shreveport was 199,311 as of the 2010 U.S. Census. The United States Census Bureau's 2018 estimate for the city's population decreased to 188,987.
Business is the activity of making one's living or making money by producing or buying and selling products. Simply put, it is "any activity or enterprise entered into for profit. It does not mean it is a company, a corporation, partnership, or have any such formal organization, but it can range from a street peddler to General Motors."
The Republican Party, also referred to as the GOP, is one of the two major political parties in the United States; the other is its historic rival, the Democratic Party.
Benton is a town in and the parish seat of Bossier Parish, in the U.S. state of Louisiana. The population was 2,035 at the 2000 census but declined to 1,948 in 2010. The town is named for 19th century U.S. Senator Thomas Hart Benton, a Democrat from Missouri and an ally of U.S. President Andrew Jackson.
A sheriff is a government official, with varying duties, existing in some countries with historical ties to England, where the office originated. There is an analogous although independently developed office in Iceland that is commonly translated to English as sheriff, and this is discussed below.
Bossier Parish is a parish located in the northwestern part of the U.S. state of Louisiana. As of the 2010 census, the population was 116,979. The parish seat is Benton. The principal city is Bossier City, which is located east of the Red River and across from the larger city of Shreveport, the seat of Caddo Parish. The parish was formed in 1843 from the western portion of Claiborne Parish.
O'Neal graduated from Southern Baptist-affiliated Baylor University in Waco, Texas. Thereafter, he enlisted in the United States Army Air Corps Reserve, forerunner to the Air Force.[3] After flight training, he became an instructor in the pilot training program and, later, he was assigned duty as a pilot for the commander of the Western Flying Training Command. He was released in 1946 as a first lieutenant.[3]
Baylor University, or simply Baylor, is a private Christian university in Waco, Texas. Chartered in 1845 by the last Congress of the Republic of Texas, it is the oldest continuously operating university in Texas and one of the first educational institutions west of the Mississippi River in the United States. Located on the banks of the Brazos River next to I-35, between the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex and Austin, the university's 1,000-acre campus is the largest Baptist university campus in the world. Baylor University's athletic teams, known as the Bears, participate in 19 intercollegiate sports. The university is a member of the Big 12 Conference in the NCAA Division I.
Waco is a city in central Texas and is the county seat of McLennan County, Texas, United States. It is situated along the Brazos River and I-35, halfway between Dallas and Austin. The city had a 2010 population of 124,805, making it the 22nd-most populous city in the state. The 2018 US Census population estimate is 138,183 The Waco Metropolitan Statistical Area consists of McLennan and Falls Counties, which had a 2010 population of 234,906. Falls County was added to the Waco MSA in 2013. The 2018 US Census population estimate for the Waco MSA is 271,942.
Texas is the second largest state in the United States by area and population. Geographically located in the South Central region of the country, Texas shares borders with the U.S. states of Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the west, and the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas to the southwest, and has a coastline with the Gulf of Mexico to the southeast.
He returned to Shreveport after World War II and entered the real estate business with his father in the firm known as "B. F. O'Neal & Son, Realtors." In 1960, he was elected president of the Shreveport-Bossier Board of Realtors and was named "Realtor of the Year." He was a vice president of the National Association of Realtors and was a member of the "Build America Better" Committee.
World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries—including all the great powers—eventually formed two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. A state of total war emerged, directly involving more than 100 million people from more than 30 countries. The major participants threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. World WarII was the deadliest conflict in human history, marked by 70 to 85 million fatalities, most of whom were civilians in the Soviet Union and China. It included massacres, the genocide of the Holocaust, strategic bombing, premeditated death from starvation and disease, and the only use of nuclear weapons in war.
Caddo Parish police jury
O'Neal was elected to the police jury (now called the Caddo Parish Commission) in the March 3, 1964, general election. He was aided in his victory by coattails provided by the Republican gubernatorial candidate Charlton Lyons of Shreveport. He and the engineer Owen D. Adams of Greenwood, later of Houston, Texas, were the first two Republicans to serve on the police jury since Charles T. Beaird, who had been elected in 1956.
During general election all or most members of a given political body are chosen. These are usually held for a nation's primary legislative body, as distinguished from by-elections and local elections.
Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build, and test machines, systems, structures and materials to fulfill objectives and requirements while considering the limitations imposed by practicality, regulation, safety, and cost. The word engineer is derived from the Latin words ingeniare and ingenium ("cleverness"). The foundational qualifications of an engineer typically include a four-year bachelor's degree in an engineering discipline, or in some jurisdictions, a master's degree in an engineering discipline plus four to six years of peer-reviewed professional practice and passage of engineering board examinations.
Greenwood is a town in southern Caddo Parish, which is located in the northwest corner of Louisiana, United States. The population was 3,219 at the 2010 census, up from 2,458 in 2000. Greenwood ranks as 3rd in population in Caddo Parish. Part of the Shreveport-Bossier City Metropolitan Statistical Area, it is located 15 miles west of downtown Shreveport.
On the police jury, O'Neal worked for equalization of tax assessments, which resulted in most parish homeowners having their assessments lowered from 40 percent to 25 percent. He was chairman of the special committee responsible for the development of an industrial park on the site of the former Caddo Parish Penal Farm.
Four terms in the legislature
In 1968, O'Neal first ran at-large for the state legislature but was defeated when the Democrats swept the state and local offices in Caddo Parish, except for Police Juror Owen Adams. Still, O'Neal led the GOP legislative ticket with 13,709 votes that year.
In 1972, aided again by coattails from the Republican gubernatorial candidate, David C. Treen, O'Neal was elected to the state legislature in a single-member district. The previous legislators had run at-large. One of them, P. J. Mills, a Shreveport banker, opted not to seek a second term but to run, unsuccessfully, for lieutenant governor. O'Neal polled 7,065 votes (54.9 percent) in a race against Democratic nominee Gard Russell Wayt Sr. (born 1939), a Shreveport insurance agent and lay leader in the United Methodist Church, who drew 5,606 votes (43.6 percent). The American Party choice, Maud C. Walton, received 193 ballots, or 1.5 percent.
David Conner Treen Sr., was an American attorney and politician from Mandeville, St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana. In 1979 he was elected as the first Republican Governor of the U.S. state of Louisiana since Reconstruction. It was a sign of changing party affiliations among white conservatives in the state, who have comprised a majority of the population since at least 1900. In 1972 Treen was the first Republican elected in modern times from this state to the U.S. House of Representatives.
Percy Joseph Mills, Jr., known as P. J. Mills, is a retired businessman residing in New Orleans, Louisiana, who served from 1968 to 1972 as a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives from Shreveport, the seat of Caddo Parish in the northwestern corner of the state.
The Office of Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana is the second highest state office in Louisiana. The current lieutenant governor is Billy Nungesser, a Republican.
O'Neal was one of only four Republicans in the 105-member body at that time. His GOP colleagues included Art Sour, also of Shreveport, who upset Democratic incumbent Frank Fulco. Sour polled 5,564 votes (53.2 percent) to Fulco's 4,886 (46.8 percent). Sour served until 1992, having been defeated in the 1991 primary.
The other Republican lawmakers were Clark Gaudin of Baton Rouge, who polled 51 percent of the vote in his race against the Democrat Lillian W. Walker, and Charles D. Lancaster Jr., who defeated Democrat Calvin P. "Chuck" Lee in a Jefferson Parish contest. Gaudin had won the House seat in a special 1967 election, lost it in 1968, and rebounded with his 1972 victory. Lancaster was defeated after a single term in 1975 but returned to the state House in 1979.
Meanwhile, O'Neal was unopposed in the first-ever nonpartisan blanket primary of 1975. At that time, he had only four Republican colleagues, and one of those, A. J. McNamara of Jefferson Parish, was actually elected as a Democrat but switched affiliation in 1977.
He was also reelected without opposition in 1979, when Treen won the governorship for one term. In 1981, the conservative O'Neal addressed the House Education Committee on the limitations of government, a persistent theme of his political thinking. He remarked:
Government doesn't do anything very well. Take government housing. It's almost a complete failure, and anyone who can afford to be out of public housing is out. ... Public education is in serious disrepair. The youngster, parents, teachers, and administrators are all unhappy....
Government has the power to use force to compel, to coerce, and to oppress, and government uses that power at every opportunity ... as in the case of forced busing to achieve racial balance in school ...[4]
O'Neal was elected to his fourth and final term in 1983. He retired from the House in 1988 and was succeeded by his fellow conservative Republican, a young attorney, and later judge, Roy Brun.
O'Neal was a member of the Education Commission of the States, the American Legislative Council, the National Conference of State Legislators, the Council for National Policy, and the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry. His favorite hobby was hunting on his family farm.
O'Neal's obituary
O'Neal was mortally injured in an automobile accident on April 4, 2004; death came twenty-five days later. O'Neal was married to the former Nancy Johns (1925-2018), the daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Barron Johns. Their children are Jane O'Neal de Bessonet (born 1950), and husband, Cary, of Baton Rouge, Dr. Barron Johns O'Neal (born 1952) and wife, Mary, of Shreveport, Lisa O'Neal Childs (born 1955) and husband, Alvin, of Shreveport, and Mary "Mimi" O'Neal Johnson (born 1960) of Jackson, Mississippi. There are twelve O'Neal grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.[5]
A memorial service was held on May 1, 2004, at St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral in Shreveport, with the Very Reverend M. L. Agnew Jr., dean of the cathedral, officiating. Interment was at Shreveport's Forest Park Cemetery. Pallbearers included Charlton H. Lyons Jr. and former Caddo Parish legislative colleague Bruce Lynn. Honorary pallbearers included Judges Tom Stagg and Roy Brun, both of Shreveport.
O'Neal is listed as a "Baptist" by Who's Who in American Politics, 2003-2004 though his service was in the Episcopal Church.[3]
O'Neal's legislative colleague, Woody Jenkins of Baton Rouge, who waged three unsuccessful races for the United States Senate, praised his friend in a 1981 newspaper column:
No man in the legislature has been a more effective and principled spokesman for individual liberty. His eloquent speeches both in committee and on the House floor have frequently been responsible for carrying the day for free enterprise, limiting the powers of government, and protecting the rights of the individual citizen.[4]
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References
↑ Lt. Bill Davis, Public Information Officer, List of sheriffs since 1843 of Bossier Parish, Louisiana
1 2 3 "Louisiana: O'Neal, B. F. Jr.", Who's Who in American Politics, 2003-2004, 19th ed., Vol. 1 (Alabama-Montana) (Marquis Who's Who: New Providence, New Jersey, 2003), p. 790
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