Billy Henry Robertson (May 5, 1938 - June 27, 2013), known as Bill Robertson, was the Former mayor of the small city of Minden, the parish seat of Webster Parish in northwestern Louisiana, United States. He was first elected on November 6, 1990 and served for as mayor from January 1, 1991 until his death.[1] With 22.5 years in office, Robertson was the longest-serving Minden mayor; the second longest-serving mayor, John T. David, held the position from 1946 to 1955.[2]
In many countries, a mayor is the highest-ranking official in a municipal government such as that of a city or a town.
Minden is a small city in and the parish seat of Webster Parish in northwestern Louisiana, United States. It is located twenty-eight miles east of Shreveport in Caddo Parish. The population has been relatively stable since 1960, when it was 12,786. Minden is 51.7 percent African American.
A county seat is an administrative center, seat of government, or capital city of a county or civil parish. The term is used in Canada, China, Romania, Taiwan and the United States. County towns have a similar function in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland, and historically in Jamaica.
On August 9, 2008, Robertson was elected president of the Louisiana Municipal Association at the annual convention in Lafayette. He succeeded outgoing LMA President Clarence R. Fields, the long-term mayor of Pineville.[3]
Lafayette is a city in and the parish seat of Lafayette Parish, Louisiana, located along the Vermilion River in the southwestern part of the state. The city of Lafayette is the fourth-largest in the state, with a population of 127,657 according to 2015 U.S. Census estimates. It is the principal city of the Lafayette, Louisiana Metropolitan Statistical Area, with a 2015 estimated population of 490,488. The larger trade area or Combined Statistical Area of Lafayette-Opelousas-Morgan City CSA was 627,146 in 2015. Its nickname is The Hub City.
Clarence Ray Fields Sr., is an American politician who has been since December 14, 1999, the mayor of Pineville, Louisiana, the sister city separated by the Red River from the larger Alexandria, both in Rapides Parish.
Pineville is a city in Rapides Parish, Louisiana, United States. It is located across the Red River from the larger Alexandria. Pineville is hence part of the Alexandria Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 14,555 at the 2010 census. It had been 13,829 in 2000; population hence grew by 5 percent over the preceding decade.
A Democrat, Robertson won his sixth consecutive four-year term on October 2, 2010. He polled 1,885 votes (53 percent) against the Republican candidate, Alton Monroe "Al" Hortman, Jr., who had also run in 2006, and two "No Party" candidates, Deric Tate and Larry Botzong. Hortman finished with 737 votes; Tate, 749 (both 21 percent), and Botzong, 170 (5 percent).[4] In the 2006 general election, Robertson polled 2,054 votes (56 percent) and carried nine of the city's fifteen precincts. Hortman then trailed with 1,596 ballots (44 percent) and led in the six other precincts.[5] Hortman hence received less than half the support in 2010 that he had in 2006.
The Democratic Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. Tracing its heritage back to Thomas Jefferson and James Madison's Democratic-Republican Party, the modern-day Democratic Party was founded around 1828 by supporters of Andrew Jackson, making it the world's oldest active political party.
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.
A precinct is a space enclosed by the walls or other boundaries of a particular place or building, or by an arbitrary and imaginary line drawn around it. The term is often used to refer to a division of a police department in a large city. New York City uses the term "precinct" for its police stations.
Minden will have another mayor [but] Bill Robertson will be 'the mayor.' That’s just the way it will be. - Marvin Thomas "Tommy" Davis, Minden city council member and Robertson's elected successor as mayor in the special election held on October 19, 2013[6]
Marvin Thomas Davis, known as Tommy Davis, is the former mayor of Minden in Webster Parish in northwestern Louisiana. Davis was sworn into office on November 5, 2013, and elected to a full term on December 6, 2014.
Background
Robertson was born to Homer Floyd Robertson (1910-1981) and the late Marie Robertson, a clerk in a shoe store, in Batesville in Independence County in northern Arkansas.[7] After a divorce, the senior Robertson married Imogene Kimmer Stanfield (1925–2008), who was formerly wed to Robert Stanfield, Sr. The couple had a son, Eddie Robertson (born 1962) of Minden, the half-brother of Bill Robertson and his brother, Bobby Gerald Robertson (born c. 1945) and wife, Lana, subsequently of Branson, Missouri.[8]
Batesville is the county seat and largest city of Independence County, Arkansas, United States, 80 miles (183 km) northeast of Little Rock, the state capital. According to the 2010 Census, the population of the city was 10,268. The city serves as a regional manufacturing and distribution hub for the Ozark Mountain region and Northeast Arkansas. This small town in the foothills of the Ozarks offers a diverse view from Ramsey Hill at the Southside to the vast Plains in the East.
Independence County is a county located in the U.S. state of Arkansas. As of the 2010 census, the population was 36,647. The county seat is Batesville. Independence County is Arkansas's ninth county, formed on October 20, 1820, from a portion of Lawrence County and named in commemoration of the Declaration of Independence. It is an alcohol prohibition or dry county.
Arkansas is a state in the southern region of the United States, home to over 3 million people as of 2018. Its name is of Siouan derivation from the language of the Osage denoting their related kin, the Quapaw Indians. The state's diverse geography ranges from the mountainous regions of the Ozark and the Ouachita Mountains, which make up the U.S. Interior Highlands, to the densely forested land in the south known as the Arkansas Timberlands, to the eastern lowlands along the Mississippi River and the Arkansas Delta.
Robertson's surviving wife, the former Barbara Kimmer, is the daughter of Dale Edgar Kimmer (1920-2006) and Virginia Martin Kimmer (1922-2013),[9] also natives of Independence County, Arkansas. Dale Kimmer, a farmer in Batesville, raised cattle and chickens until he and Virginia retired and relocated to Minden in 1995. Robertson's stepmother, Imogene, and his father-in-law, Dale, were siblings. Bill and Barbara Robertson have three children, Beverly Jane Waller and husband, Mike; Brenda R. Weeks (1962-2017), a sales manager and counselor for Centuries and Hill Crest Memorial Funeral Home and Cemeteries in Haughton, who was married to Billy Weeks of Minden, [10] and Kyle Kimmer Robertson.[11] In 2016, the Minden community raised $18,000 to assist Brenda Weeks, a lung cancer patient who lost the lower portion of her left leg a year before her death.[12]
Haughton is a town in Bossier Parish, Louisiana, United States. The population was 3,454 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Shreveport–Bossier City Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Lung cancer, also known as lung carcinoma, is a malignant lung tumor characterized by uncontrolled cell growth in tissues of the lung. This growth can spread beyond the lung by the process of metastasis into nearby tissue or other parts of the body. Most cancers that start in the lung, known as primary lung cancers, are carcinomas. The two main types are small-cell lung carcinoma (SCLC) and non-small-cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC). The most common symptoms are coughing, weight loss, shortness of breath, and chest pains.
Robertson was an employee of Talbot's Shoe Store in Magnolia, Arkansas. He was sent to Minden to operate a Talbot's outlet and thereafter purchased the store from Ben Talbot and his father, D. O. Talbot, having renamed it "Robertson's Shoes", which he operated until 1979.[1][13]
For a time, Bill and Barbara Robertson had another outlet in Minden, along with Robertson's Shoes, called the Purple Hippopotamus, which opened in 1972.[14] The Robertsons had another store in Homer in neighboring Claiborne Parish, which opened in 1973, and a fourth outlet in Shreveport, which was launched in 1976. He opened the Shoe Box in Minden in 1978.[1]
As a past president of the Jaycees, Robertson had been included in the 1965 edition of the publication Outstanding Young Men of America. He was named "Outstanding Young Man of Minden" in 1969. He was also a former chairman of the Minden Airport Authority.[1]
Early political activities
In 1967, Robertson filed to run for one of four positions in the former Ward 4 on the Webster Parish Police Jury,[15] the parish governing body usually known as the county commission in other states. In this race, the incumbent police juror, John T. David, a former Minden mayor, was defeated for reelection but veteran jurors Leland G. Mims and W. Nick Love retained their seats. The newcomer elected to the jury to succeed David was not Robertson, who ran last among six candidates, but James Tenney "Jim" Branch, Jr.,[16] who subsequently lost a bid for mayor in 1982 to Noel Byars.
In September 1974, Robertson was elected to the Minden City Council. He defeated fellow Democrat Patrick Cary Nation (1918–2005), a retired educator, coach, and school principal, for the specific position of sanitation commissioner. Robertson was the last person to serve in that capacity. Nation's father, Abraham Brisco Nation, Sr. (1886–1933), had served as a city councilman from 1932 until he was shot to death on Armistice Day 1933, during a heated political argument, by John L. Fort (1906–1992), a son of then Mayor Connell Fort, with whom the senior Nation had quarreled.[17]
Robertson took office on the city council in January 1975 and served until the abolition of the city commission government in 1978, when it was replaced by the current single-member-district mayor-council format.
Thereafter, Robertson was elected to the Webster Parish Police Jury in 1979 from the District 6 seat, a position that he held until 1990, when he resigned with a year remaining in his third term in order to become mayor of Minden.
In 1981, nearly a thousand constituents attempted to recall Robertson and some of his colleagues from the police jury in a dispute regarding the temporary removal of litter bins throughout Webster Parish because of the lack of recurring funds to sustains such services.[18] When the petition was submitted, Robertson successfully appealed to enough voters to remove their names to avoid a recall election. "I think people are basically fair. If police jurors could sit across the table and explain on a person-to-person basis ... people could see a portion of the problem."[19]
When Robertson successfully sought reelection to the police jury in 1983, he listed solid waste disposal and jail/penal farm issues as his top concern.[20] Five new jurors won election in 1983, and Robertson was elected jury president early in 1984.[21]
Losing mayoral campaign, 1989
Robertson ran unsuccessfully for mayor in the 1989 special election held to fill the remaining months of the term of another Democrat, Noel "Gene" Byars, who had been recalled from the position in a "Yes" or "No" vote after a citizens' audit revealed that he had charged personal expenses to his municipal credit card. Robertson and two preceding Democratic mayors, J.E. "Pat" Patterson and Jack Batton, contributed money to the recall. Byars hence left Minden and took a job in educational administration in Beaumont in Jefferson County in southeastern Texas.
African American City Councilman Robert T. Tobin filled in temporarily after Byars vacated the mayoral office. Tobin hence became Minden's first black mayor since Reconstruction. Tobin was unseated, however, in the November 7, 1989 special election by the GOP newcomer Paul A. Brown for the year remaining in Byars' term. Brown had been the executive director of the Minden Chamber of Commerce after relocating to the city to take a position as a counselor to alcoholics. Robertson, still on the police jury, ran unsuccessfully against both Brown and Tobin in the fall of 1989.
Though defeated for mayor in his first bid for the office, Robertson in January 1990, was elected to a seventh one-year term as president of the police jury.[22]
In the 2010 census, Minden was 51.7 percent African-American.[23] Based on the application of the 2000 census, in which African Americans were 52.1 percent of the Minden population, blacks constitute the majority in three of the five city council districts.[24]
Toppling Paul Brown, 1990
Robertson entered the race for a full term as mayor in 1990. He and Minden businessman Billy Sherman Cost (born 1948) challenged Brown, who was seeking his first full term in the position. Cost and Thomas L. Hathorn (born 1951), another Minden businessman, had led the citizens' panel advocating the recall of Byars. Brown nearly won in the first round: 2,630 ballots (48 percent) to Robertson's 1,729 (32 percent), and Cost's 1,064 votes (20 percent). Robertson and Brown therefore advanced to the general election.[25]
Before the primary, Brown was seriously injured on September 28, 1990, in an accident on the Minden High School football field while he was moving the yardage chains. Having no memory of the accident, Brown remained hospitalized throughout the campaign. Minden physician John Hill declared Brown's condition as "conscious and hopeful ... an answer to prayer".[26] As concern persisted that the still disabled Brown could not discharge his duties in a full term, voters handily elected Robertson, 2,529 votes (59 percent) to 1,758 (41 percent).[27] Brown hence polled 872 fewer votes in the second round of balloting than he had in the first. The 1990 general election hence launched Robertson into a long career as his city's chief municipal official.
Robertson's first two months in office were plagued by personal health issues. On January 9, 1991, a week after he presided over his first city council meeting, Robertson underwent successful triple heart bypass surgery at Schumpert Medical Center in Shreveport.[28] Problems developed, and he underwent a second operation on January 20 to reattach surgical wires in his lower sternum. Tubes were inserted to drain the buildup of post-operative fluids.[29] He was released from the hospital on January 28[30] and returned to his mayoral duties on February 13.[31]
In April 1991, Robertson sought federal disaster relief after floods overpowered the drainage system in Minden. Nine inches of rain fell in eight hours, and many homes were under three feet of water.[32]
In 1994, Robertson ran for reelection citing the upgrading of utilities and development of the Interstate 20service road as his campaign tenets.[33] Robertson won his second term over fellow Democrat Douglas "Doug" Frye and the Independent Lydianne Vulliamy Scallorn Hammons (born 1936), the wife of Minden businessman Orville Hammons (1915–2011).[34] Robertson received 2,019 (55 percent) to Frye's 1,285 ballots (35 percent), and 369 votes (10 percent) for Mrs. Hammons,[35] a former city clerk who had certified the recall petition signatures against former Mayor Byars.
Defeating Benjamin Wright
In 1998, Robertson overwhelmed the Minden businessman, Benjamin Franklin Wright, Jr. (born 1959), a Claiborne Parish native who ran as an Independent. Robertson polled 2,697 votes (89 percent) to 331 votes (11 percent) in a low-turnout election.[36]
In 2005, Wright was convicted and sentenced to ten years imprisonment for videovoyeurism. He was found to have filmed female customers using the dressing room in his clothing store in Minden. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Shreveport upheld the conviction in June 2006 but vacated the sentence because of error. Wright was also arrested on March 18, 2004, on an allegation of having threatened to murder a child protection agent in connection with a child custody dispute. City police stopped Wright to arrest him for public intimidation; they also found videotapes inside his vehicle and later child pornography on Wright's computer disks. He was found guilty on November 14, 2006, of twenty-three of twenty-four counts of possessing child pornography.
No opponent filed against Robertson in 2002.
The first campaign against Al Hortman
Robertson faced three challengers in his 2006 reelection bid. Photographer John Edward Quade (born 1947), a Democrat, was eliminated in the primary. He is a 1966 graduate of Minden High School, the son of Stanley B. and Elnora Davis Quade and the great-grandson of Webster Parish pioneer William G. Stewart, a former president of the Webster Parish School Board for whom the former William G. Stewart Elementary School in Minden was named. Republican Al Hortman ran sufficiently strong to force Robertson into a general election.[37] Hortman (born 1941) graduated in 1959 from Minden High School. He resided over the years in Dallas, St. Louis, and Atlanta but returned to Minden to care for his ailing mother,[38] Katherine Marie Fish Hortman (1909–2003).[39]
Hortman was the president of a concerned group of citizens who drafted the Minden 2020 Visionaries Master Plan, a 20-year proposal for long-range community progress. The plan was developed over a two-year period prior to 2000. Some 150 Minden citizens worked on the project which Hortman spearheaded.[38]
A former peace officer and a Methodist pastor, Hortman said that he could work with all aspects of the Minden community. Hortman formerly taught math and coached soccer at Huntington High School in Shreveport.[38]
Robertson as mayor
During Robertson’s tenure, some 85 percent of the city streets have been overlaid, and major upgrades have been completed on the electrical, wastewater, and water systems. Many of the projects were funded through state and federal grants. Robertson has pledged to keep electrical rates—the city operates its own power plant—among the lowest in Louisiana.
The city partnered with the Minden/South Webster Chamber of Commerce to establish an office to conduct economic development services. A new director was hired to work on the expansion of local businesses and to attract new employers. Robertson said that the city seeks to attract new industry and entice such new businesses as a movie theatre, skating rink, bowling alley, and additional restaurants. At one time, Minden had two sit-down theaters and a drive-in theater. The last theater closed in the 1970s. Studies show that communities which cannot sustain a theater have difficulty with growth and development.
Robertson was elected by his fellow mayors as first vice-president at the 2007 LMA convention in Monroe. A year later, he was elected president of the association. He is a former second vice-president and a district vice-president of the LMA. As mayor, Robertson was an ex officio board member of the Louisiana Energy and Power Authority. LEPA was established by the Louisiana legislature in 1979 as an action agency for the eighteen Louisiana cities and towns which maintain their own independent municipal power system. He was a member of the Chamber of Commerce,[13] the Masonic lodge, and the Shriners.[40]
Death
Robertson had major back surgery in April 2013 and underwent rehabilitation. He died some two months later at the age of seventy-five in the Promise Hospital in Bossier City.[1] His services were held on June 30, 2013 at the First Baptist Church of Minden, where he was an active member. Pastors Leland Crawford of First Baptist and Richard D. Methvin of Eastside Missionary Baptist Church in Minden officiated.[40]
At the funeral, city council member Marvin Thomas "Tommy" Davis described Robertson as "bigger than life. He was respected across the state by everybody. ... Minden will have another mayor [but] Bill Robertson will be 'the mayor.' That’s just the way it will be."[41]
Dr. Richard Campbell, a Minden dentist, said that Robertson was able to bridge across political, religious, and racial lines and leaves a legacy of sound economic policy. Robertson-sponsored improvements include renovated roads, parks, low electricity rates, a state-of-the-art airport, festivals, and the city recreation center. "It's quite a legacy he leaves for his city and family," added Campbell.[41]
The day after Robertson's funeral, a letter written by Robertson earlier in 2013 was released by Wanda Pittman, Robertson's executive assistant. It reveals that Robertson and his wife recommend that the city council choose Marvin Thomas "Tommy" Davis, the District D member, as the next mayor.[42] First elected in 2006, Davis was until his election as mayor the only Republican on the current city council.[43] A businessman, Davis is a native of Stephens in Ouachita County in south Arkansas.
On July 11, 2013, the Minden City Council ignored Robertson's request and instead named one of the three African-American council members, Mayor Pro Tem Joseph Burgess Cornelius, Sr., as the interim mayor. Cornelius was elected in District A in 2010. The vote to appoint Cornelius was three-to-two along racial lines.[44] Joe Cornelius, Sr., as he is known, formerly resided in The Bronx borough of New York City and in Shreveport.[45] On July 15, 2013, the council named Wayne Edwards, the runner-up to Cornelius in the 2010 primary election,[4] to succeed Cornelius. Edwards then won the seat in the October 19 special election which brought Davis to the mayor's office for a term of just over one year.[46]
Webster Parish is a parish located in the northwestern section of the U.S. state of Louisiana. The seat of the parish is Minden.
Robert Floyd Kennon Sr., known as Bob Kennon, was the 48th Governor of Louisiana, serving from 1952 to 1956. From 1954 to 1955, he was chairman of the National Governors Association. In 1955, he was also the chairman of the Council of State Governments.
Parey Pershing Branton Sr. was a businessman from Shongaloo, Louisiana, who was from 1960 to 1972 a Democratic member of the Louisiana House of Representatives from what is now District 10 in Webster Parish. The district, which includes the parish seat of Minden in northwestern Louisiana, is now represented by the Democrat Gene Reynolds of Dubberly.
Richard Harmon Drew Jr., is a Louisiana fifth-generation judge, legal lecturer, and rhythm-and-blues musician. He is serving a second 10-year term on his state's Second Circuit Court of Appeal, based in Shreveport.
John Nicholas Sandlin, Sr., of Minden, Louisiana, represented Louisiana's 4th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives from 1921 to 1937.
Fulton Eugene Eason was a businessman from Springhill, Louisiana, who ran as a Republican in four elections for the Louisiana House of Representatives in calendar year 1991. He won the special election runoff on March 23 for a 9-month unexpired term from District 10, then encompassing all of Webster Parish in northwestern Louisiana. Eason was the first Republican ever to seek election to the heavily Democratic Webster Parish seat in the Louisiana House.
Oscar Henry Haynes Jr., known as O. H. Haynes, was from 1964 to 1980 the Democratic sheriff of Webster Parish in northwestern Louisiana. He was also the parish Exxon distributor for some four decades.
Henry Newton Brown, Jr., is a Louisiana appellate judge, legal lecturer, and former district attorney. He is serving his third 10-year elected term on the Louisiana Second Circuit Court of Appeal, based in Shreveport, having been elected in 1990, 2000, and 2010.
Bruce Martin Bolin is a retired judge of the 26th Judicial District of Louisiana and a former member of the Louisiana House of Representatives. Bolin held court from 1991 to 2012 in the Division E judgeship based in Benton and Minden, the seats of government of Bossier and Webster parishes, respectively.
The Minden Press-Herald is a Monday-Friday daily newspaper published in Minden, the parish seat of Webster Parish in northwestern Louisiana, by Specht Newspapers, Inc. It serves the Minden and Webster Parish circulation area with mostly local news.
Jefferson Franklin Colbert, known as J. Frank Colbert, was a Democratic politician and Georgist. He served in the Louisiana House of Representatives from 1920 to 1925 and from 1944 to 1946 as the mayor of the small city of Minden, the seat of government of Webster Parish in northwestern Louisiana.
Ernest Dewey Gleason, known as E. D. Gleason, was a Democratic member of the Louisiana House of Representatives from the Evergreen Community north of Minden in Webster Parish in northwestern Louisiana. Gleason served from 1952 until his death at the end of his second term. He was briefly succeeded in office by his widow, Mary Smith Gleason, who was appointed for the remaining eight months by then Governor Earl Kemp Long.
Harmon Caldwell Drew was a lawyer from Minden, Louisiana, who served prior to 1945 as the district attorney of Bossier and Webster parishes and then as a judge of both the district and the state appeal courts. His political career ended with his defeat by future Governor Robert F. Kennon. Drew's grandson, Harmon Drew, Jr., of Minden is a sitting judge on the Second Circuit Court of Appeal, based in Shreveport.
Joseph Burgess Cornelius Sr., known as Joe Cornelius Sr., is an American businessman and community organizer in Minden, Louisiana, who is a former interim mayor of his city, located in Webster Parish in the northwestern portion of the state. He is the second African American in nearly a quarter century to succeed directly from the Minden City Council to the mayor's position after an unexpected vacancy developed.
John David Batton, known as J. D. Batton, was from 1952 to 1964 the sheriff of his native Webster Parish in northwestern Louisiana. He was defeated after three terms by O. H. Haynes, Jr., a fellow Democrat and the son of the sheriff, O. H. Haynes, Sr., whom Batton had himself unseated twelve years earlier.
Royce Lafayette McMahen, known as Royce L. "Doc" McMahen, was a veterinarian from Springhill who served as a Democrat from 1980 to 1996 as the sheriff of Webster Parish in northwestern Louisiana.
Larkin Theodore Riser, Jr., known as Ted Riser, is a former sheriff of Webster Parish in northwestern Louisiana. He served two terms as a Democrat from 1996 to 2004 but at some point after leaving office, he switched to Republican affiliation.
Michael Owens Craig known as Mike Craig, is the Division A judge of the 26th Judicial District Court of Bossier and Webster parishes in northwestern Louisiana. Craig resides in Bossier City, but the court is based in nearby Benton and Minden, the seats of government of Bossier and Webster parishes, respectively. Five serving judges are Republicans; there is a vacancy for the sixth position.
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