J Howell Flournoy

Background

A native of Greenwood in southwestern Caddo Parish, Flournoy was the son of James Patteson "Pat" Flournoy, Sr., the Caddo Parish sheriff from 1906–1916, who had previously been the Shreveport municipal auditor, parish tax assessor, and coroner, at a time when medical examiners in Louisiana need not have been physicians. Flournoy was the paternal grandson of 19th century Sheriff Alonzo Flournoy.

Flournoy was educated in public schools in Shreveport and thereafter attended an unnamed business college. A Louisiana National Guardsman, Flournoy was a United States Army veteran of World War I, with assignment on the Mexican border. He was also as an instructor in a machine gun school at Camp Hancock, Georgia, and was commissioned a lieutenant.

Public career

At seventeen, Flournoy became a deputy in the Caddo Parish sheriff's department, a position that he held from 1913–1928. He was hence a deputy under his father from 1913 to 1916, as were two of his brothers, James Flournoy, Jr., and George A. Flournoy. From 1928 to 1940, J. Howell Flournoy was a deputy Caddo Parish tax collector. In 1940, Flournoy was elected sheriff to succeed Thomas Roland Hughes in the same political cycle which brought Sam Houston Jones of Lake Charles to the governorship. Hughes, known for his arrest of the controversial blues musician Lead Belly, had succeeded J. Pat Flournoy as sheriff in 1916. As sheriff, J. Howell Flournoy in 1940 organized the Caddo Parish Selective Service board and trained an internal security group in Shreveport during World War II. He spearheaded a measure to establish a pension and relief fund for sheriff's department employees. From 1950 until his death, except for one year, Flournoy headed the Louisiana Sheriff's Pension and Relief Fund.

Flournoy often received commendations for his work in law enforcement from J. Edgar Hoover, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The defunct Shreveport Journal afternoon newspaper referred to Flournoy, accordingly, "A well-known conservative and a spokesman for patriotism, Sheriff Flournoy spent his entire adult life striving to improve his department in all fields of duty and speaking out against anything or any group which he felt posed a threat to Americanism. The sheriff and his department, ranked among the best and were often copied by other similar law agencies . . . he was also recognized for his well-known work with youth, including his Junior Rifle Program, nationally acclaimed.

Flournoy was originally a segregationist though he hired the first African American deputies in Caddo Parish. When State Senator William M. Rainach of Claiborne Parish telephoned Flournoy to inform him that one of the African-American deputies had spoken in support of racial integration, Flournoy dismissed the man. In 1964, Flournoy, a Democrat, broke party lines to endorse the Republican presidential nominee, then U.S. Senator Barry M. Goldwater of Arizona. Joining Flournoy in support of Goldwater, who spoke in Shreveport on September 17, were former Governors Sam Jones and Robert F. Kennon, State Senator Jackson B. Davis of Shreveport, Louisiana Secretary of State Wade O. Martin, Jr., Lieutenant Governor C. C. "Taddy" Aycock of Franklin in St. Mary Parish, and the then mayor of Monroe, W. L. "Jack" Howard.

In 1947, Flournoy hired Harold M. Terry (1925-2016) as a deputy, later the manager of the Junior Rifle Program and an expert marksman. Terry himself was sheriff from 1976 to 1980.

In 1952, Flournoy hired George W. D'Artois as a deputy sheriff, a post he held for nine years. D'Artois stepped down in 1962 to run successfully for Shreveport public service commissioner, a position abolished in 1978 under the mayor-council city charter.

Personal life and death

In 1965, Flournoy was named the "Outstanding Conservative of the Year" by the Americanism Forum of Shreveport. He received other honors from the Progressive Men's Club and the American Society of Safety Engineers. Flournoy was affiliated with the American Legion, Lions International, Chamber of Commerce, Order of the Eastern Star, the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, Masonic lodge, and the Shriners, a group which in the late 1920s located one of its children's hospital in Shreveport. He was president of the Caddo Rifle and Pistol Club from 1956 until his death. He was the first marshal of the Holiday in Dixie festival held each April in Shreveport.

Flournoy was married to the former Mary Bridges, a native of Morehouse Parish near Monroe, who moved to Shreveport with her family in 1913. The Flournoys had one daughter, Georgia Lou Flournoy Hodgson, who was living in Kuwait at the time of her father's death.

Flournoy was a member of the First First Presbyterian Church of Shreveport until he helped to organize and then became an elder in the newer Broadmoor Presbyterian Church in the Broadmoor neighborhood of Shreveport. He resided at 180 Preston Avenue in Broadmoor. Flournoy died at Schumpert Hospital in Shreveport of cardiovascular disease at the age of seventy-five. Flournoy and his wife are interred at Forest Park East Cemetery in Shreveport.

Flournoy had announced two months before his death that he would not seek reelection in 1967. He endorsed as his preferred successor his chief deputy, James M. Goslin, a Democrat originally from Calhoun in western Ouachita Parish who was reared in Ruston in north Louisiana. As chief deputy, Goslin served the remainder of Flournoy's term and was then elected sheriff outright in 1967 and again in 1971.