Cecil C Lowe

Background

A native and lifelong Minden resident, Lowe was named for his mother, the former Cecile Cherry (1898-1983). His father, Eugene Henry Lowe, Sr. (1890-1981), was a native of Claiborne Parish and a retired Minden merchant and one of the founding directors of the former Minden Bank and Trust Company, since Regions Bank.

Lowe graduated in 1940 from Minden High School and then attended Louisiana Tech University in Ruston. He received his legal credentials through Louisiana State University Law Center in Baton Rouge, where he was a board member of Louisiana Law Review in 1943 and again from 1946 to 1947. He interrupted his legal studies to serve during World War II in the United States Navy, from which he was discharged as a lieutenant in the United States Navy Reserve. He worked for a time at the former Louisiana Army Ammunition Plant west of Minden to pay expenses for law school.

Lowe was a long-term member of the First United Methodist Church of Minden, for which he was chairman of the trustees and the stewards. A former president of the Jaycees, he was the "Outstanding Young Man of Minden" in 1956.

Political life

In 1949, the Minden City Council appointed Lowe as the city attorney. In 1952, Lowe ran unsuccessfully as a Democrat for district attorney of the 26th Judicial District but finished third in the primary election. Louis H. Padgett, Jr. (1913-1980), of Bossier City, was elected district attorney and served until 1970. In 1954, Lowe ran to succeed R. Harmon Drew, Sr., as the Minden municipal judge, a position which spills over to include all of Ward I in south Webster Parish. In the Democratic runoff election, Lowe defeated A. Eugene Frazier (1922-2001), 1,784 to 1,133 votes. Former Minden Mayor David William Thomas was eliminated in the primary race. Drew did not seek reelection as city judge, but he later reclaimed the position twice; like Lowe, Drew had been a losing candidate for district attorney two years earlier in 1952.For a time Judge Lowe was a law partner of John B. Benton, Jr. (1924-2009), a Minden attorney who served briefly as district attorney when Louis Padgett, Jr., was elected as a state court judge.

In the Democratic primary election held on August 13, 1966, Lowe handily defeated the Minden attorney Charles A. Marvin to win all but one precinct in the race for city and Ward I judge. Lowe received 2,952 votes to Marvin's 1,530. Marvin subsequently in 1971 became the Bossier-Webster district attorney, succeeding the interim DA John Benton, and in 1975 a judge of the Louisiana Second Circuit Court of Appeal, based in Shreveport. Lowe remained city judge for twenty-two years until his election on November 1, 1975, in the first ever nonpartisan blanket primary held in Louisiana to the newly established fourth judgeship of the state 26th Judicial District Court. In that contest, in which Edwin W. Edwards secured his second consecutive term as governor, Lowe received 15,916 votes to 11,450 for his opponent, assistant district attorney Harvey P. DeLaune (1923-2009), a Democrat from Bossier City and a combat Marine at Bougainville, Guadalcanal, and Guam in World War II.

Former State Senator John W. "Jack" Montgomery filled the city judgeship vacated by Lowe on an interim basis until Minden attorney Graydon K. Kitchens, Jr., won the position in a special election runoff held on June 5, 1976, against another Minden Democrat and frequent political candidate, Henry Grady Hobbs.

In 1990, at the request of Judge Graydon Kitchens, Jr., by then serving on the 26th Judicial District Court, Lowe was temporarily named a judge once again on the district court. Lowe was also an ad hoc judge of the Louisiana Second Circuit Court of Appeal in Shreveport.

Judge Lowe was known for his stern demeanor in the courtroom. Once he sentenced a female defendant to "hard labor suspended sentence"; when the woman heard "hard labor", she collapsed to the floor and had to be revived. The judge never cracked a smile at the turn of events. He was involved in lengthy litigation regarding disputed ownership by several companies of an oilfield in Bossier Parish. Prior to his decision to retire, he was repeatedly tongue-lashed by a defense attorney in a high profile murder case. Lowe told colleagues that his treatment in that trial hastened his decision to retire after thirty-four years as a judge.

Death and family

Lowe was predeceased by his wife, the former Elizabeth Chapman (1926-2010), a native of Cairo in southern Illinois; his brother, E. Henry Lowe, Jr. (1920-1987), the former superintendent of the Minden city utilities department; two sisters, Ann Elizabeth Smith of Baton Rouge and Mary Frances Lambert of Longview, Texas, and a grandson, Mark Alan Lowe, Jr. He was survived by three children, John Paul Lowe and his wife, Vicki Prather Lowe, of Shreveport; Susan Elizabeth Lowe of Houston, Texas, and Mark Alan Lowe, Sr., and his wife Rebecca, of Lafayette, Louisiana, and three grandchildren.

Cecil and Elizabeth Lowe are interred at Gardens of Memory Cemetery in Minden.