Dudley J. LeBlanc

Dudley Joseph LeBlanc, Sr. (August 16, 1894 – October 22, 1971), also known as Coozan Dud LeBlanc, was an American Democratic, Roman Catholic and Cajun member of the Louisiana State Senate whose entrepreneurial talents netted him a fortune through the patent medicine he invented known as Hadacol. He is also considered the "father of the old age pension" in Louisiana. His birth home was relocated from the LeBlanc community to Lafayette, Louisiana to become part of Acadian Village, an authentic vision of 19th century life in Southwest Louisiana.

Early years and military service

LeBlanc was born to Numa and Noemie LeBlanc in the farming community of LeBlanc near Youngsville, in Lafayette Parish. The LeBlancs moved to Erath in Vermilion Parish, when he was a toddler. He considered Vermilion Parish as his home throughout his life, though technically he was not a native of that parish. He grew up speaking nothing but French and never lost his Cajun accent.^[1] He graduated from Erath High School. When he turned eighteen, LeBlanc graduated from the institution now known as the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. At the time it was called "Southwestern Louisiana Institute." LeBlanc self-financed his college expenses by running a clothes pressing business at night. The operation was so successful that he reportedly helped to put two cousins through school as well.

After he graduated from college, LeBlanc became a high-powered salesman of tobacco, shoes, crude oil, and, later, patent medicines. He was so successful that he sent each of his four brothers through college. "Then I went into the United States Army (as a sergeant). Educating my brothers took it all," LeBlanc quipped. However, one of his brothers, Raoul J. LeBlanc, was already serving in combat in France as a member of Louisiana's Washington Artillery during World War I.

LeBlanc spent most of his adult years in Abbeville, the seat of Vermilion Parish, where LeBlanc had a large, comfortable home.

Removing Huey P. Long, Jr. from Power

In 1924, LeBlanc was elected to the Louisiana House of Representatives. He ran because he did not think that the incumbent representative had done a good job of bringing roads into Vermilion Parish. A story persists that the representative dared LeBlanc to run against him, and LeBlanc accepted the challenge and narrowly unseated the lawmaker.

LeBlanc served only a half term in the state House because he was elected for a six-year term in 1926 to one of the then three seats on the Louisiana Public Service Commission, the utility rate-making body. He defeated the candidate supported by Huey P. Long. LeBlanc's district covered all of the southwestern third of the state. The commission was expanded to five members under the Louisiana Constitution of 1974.

LeBlanc provided the third swing vote to remove Huey Long as the PSC chairman, as Long was attempting to use the position to promote his pending gubernatorial candidacy. LeBlanc accused Long of being a "slacker" in World War I.

1932 gubernatorial campaign

LeBlanc and Huey Long, both being salesmen, had become friends during the 1920s. By the time that LeBlanc decided to run for governor in 1932, they were bitter intraparty rivals. Huey Long got a fellow representative, Gilbert Dupre, to claim that LeBlanc "associated with Negroes".^[2]

Long threw his support to the eventual gubernatorial winner, Oscar K. Allen of Winnfield. There were reports of fraud in the balloting, but the election was not close. Allen prevailed with 214,699 votes (56.5 percent) to LeBlanc's 110,848 ballots (29 percent). A third candidate, George Guion, polled 53,756 votes (14.2 percent). Some fishermen even claimed to have seen ballot boxes floating down the Mississippi River.

In the 1932 campaign, LeBlanc spent more time attacking Long, who was not a candidate for reelection, than he did his principal rival, Oscar Allen. Long retaliated: in stump speeches, he poked fun at LeBlanc's French name, much as Long's brother, Earl Kemp Long, later ridiculed then New Orleans Mayor deLesseps Story Morrison in the 1955 gubernatorial primary. Long also criticized LeBlanc's funeral business, which catered primarily to African Americans.

It was during this losing campaign for governor that LeBlanc began calling for a $30 old-age pension. Years later, Governor Earl K. Long, who found LeBlanc charming and humorous, declared LeBlanc the "father of the old-age pension".^[3] By that time, the payments were $100 per month.

After his defeat for governor, LeBlanc returned to another prosperous burial insurance business, the "Thibodaux Benevolent Association". Long prevented LeBlanc from operating his business in Louisiana by getting the legislature to pass a law forbidding that type of insurance company from operating in the state. Subsequently, LeBlanc moved the company to Texas, where it continued to prosper. After Long's assassination in 1935, LeBlanc sold that business and returned to Abbeville.

In the 1963-1964 Louisiana gubernatorial campaign, John McKeithen went into a run-off against Delessups Story "Chep" Morrison, Sr. Initially LeBlanc supported Morrison but changed his mind, and his Cajun block of voters, to McKeithen. After his election, Governor McKeithen considered returning LeBlanc to the post of State Senate President Pro Tempore, third in line in gubernatorial succession. LeBlanc had held that position in Earl Long's second term from 1948 to 1952. When controversy surfaced over the proposed appointment, however, McKeithen changed his mind.

Four state senate terms

In 1940, LeBlanc was elected to the first of his four nonconsecutive terms in the Louisiana State Senate. LeBlanc served from 1940 to 1944 (Governor Sam Jones), 1948 to 1952 (second Earl Long administration), 1964 to 1968, and 1968 to 1971 (McKeithen), when he died in office, with some seven months remaining in the term.

At the time of his death, LeBlanc was also seeking a fifth term in the Senate from a reconfigured district including Vermilion and Acadia parishes.

LeBlanc also ran three times—in 1952, 1954, and 1966—for the United States House of Representatives from Louisiana's 3rd congressional district against the Lafayette-based incumbent, Edwin E. Willis. State Representative Dick Guidry of Lafourche Parish was a third candidate in the 1966 congressional primary.^[4] Willis prevailed over both LeBlanc and Guidry and then defeated the Republican Hall Lyons of Lafayette in the 1966 general election.^[5]

Campaigning in French

LeBlanc often campaigned in French when he made appearances in Acadiana. In his ethnic tongue, he extolled his virtues as a politician who deserved the support of his fellow French ethnics, and he attacked his opponents in a language that most of his rivals could not understand. Former Louisiana Senator Edgar "Sonny" Mouton, a Democrat from Lafayette who served with LeBlanc in the 1960s avowed that LeBlanc controlled a block of rural votes in excess of 40,000, enough to swing an election.^[6]

William J. "Bill" Dodd, a friend and sometimes rival of LeBlanc's, said that LeBlanc once addressed a political gathering in which Public Service Commissioner Ernest S. Clements, who did not speak French—he was from mostly English Oberlin in Allen Parish—was in attendance. A practical joker, LeBlanc had some fun with Clements: he assailed Huey and Earl Long and Clements. There was Clements on the platform applauding as LeBlanc called him "a crook!" Only in Louisiana, it was said, could such politicking be commonplace. And, yes, on more than one occasion Earl Long called LeBlanc "a crook."

Dodd recalled an incident when he was lieutenant governor between 1948 and 1952 and presided over the state senate. LeBlanc was accused by an unnamed north Louisiana senator of having a financial interest in some proposed law. Dodd said in his memoirs, Peapatch Politics: The Earl Long Era in Louisiana Politics, that "Dudley had a hard time getting gung ho for any political act that didn't help him personally." The two senators nearly came to physical blows. Then the whole Senate burst into laughter,and two forgot their differences.

LeBlanc humorously recounted his French-language campaigning, as a contestant on Groucho Marx's NBC television quiz show, You Bet Your Life on January 18, 1951. On the show, when Groucho asked LeBlanc what Hadacol was good for, he quipped, "It was good for about five million dollars for me last year."

Running for governor again, 1944 and 1952

In 1944, LeBlanc surrendered his senate seat to make his second run for governor. He polled only 40,392 votes (8.4 percent). Ernest Clements was running for governor too—he polled about half as many votes as LeBlanc received. The winner that year was LeBlanc's fellow Democrat, Jimmie Davis, who won the first of his two nonconsecutive terms, having defeated principal rival Lewis L. Morgan of Covington, the seat of St. Tammany Parish. Still another 1944 candidate was Sam Caldwell, the Mayor of Shreveport, who finished with fewer than thirty thousand votes.

LeBlanc returned to the state senate in 1948, only to give up the seat again in 1952, so that he could contest the gubernatorial nomination for the third time. He polled 62,906 votes (8.3 percent). The winner that year was Democrat Robert F. Kennon, a judge and former mayor of Minden, the seat of Webster Parish in north Louisiana. Dodd was in the same race and also fared poorly, but he still received more votes than LeBlanc.

LeBlanc used his state Senate seat to pass legislation to assist teachers, farmers, and veterans. He also developed the Louisiana Old Age Pension, originally $30 a month, for people over the age of sixty-five. At one point, he was outbidding the Longs on how much the state could afford to pay the aged.

In the 1947-1948 campaign—the election was in January 1948, but most of the voter appeals were made in the fall of 1947—then State Representative Dodd, who himself was running for lieutenant governor on the Earl Long slate, and LeBlanc, who was running for a second term in the state senate, campaigned together for a few days. They used LeBlanc's comfortable Abbeville home as a base of operations in Acadiana. LeBlanc had supported anti-Long candidates Sam Jones and James Houston Davis in 1940 and 1944, respectively. But in 1948, he supported Long, whom he expected to win, against Jones, who was trailing badly in a comeback attempt.

In 1951, LeBlanc had considered running for lieutenant governor, which was then the presiding officer of the state senate, on Dodd's gubernatorial ticket. However, Earl Long, when he heard of LeBlanc's plans, had a friend tell an untruth about Dodd to LeBlanc. Long split the two old friends, as was his forte, but the breach was temporary. So LeBlanc and Dodd both ran unsuccessfully for governor.

Defender of Cajun culture and author

In addition to his determined political activities, LeBlanc was a staunch defender of preserving Cajun culture in Louisiana. He served as president of the Association of Louisiana Acadians and promoted unions between Louisiana and Canada and France. LeBlanc led pilgrimages of Louisiana Cajuns to Nova Scotia, Canada and France, including Paris and Belle-Ile-en-Mer, the French island where many French Acadians from Nova Scotia were exiled in the "Grande Derangement" or Acadian Deportation of 1755. He encouraged and arranged exchanges of students and teachers from Canada, France and other French-speaking territories to come to Louisiana schools and colleges, as Louisiana students and teachers did the same.

In 1928, LeBlanc led a group of Acadians to a convention of North American Acadians in Massachusetts, and passionately spoke to the six thousand delegates about the Acadian Deportation that the National Democratic Party asked LeBlanc to campaign for Democratic candidates in French-speaking territories of the Northeast.^[7]

LeBlanc obtained $10,000.00 from the Louisiana State Legislature as a legislator for the creation of the Evangeline State Park, named after Evangeline, the heroine in the poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

In the late 1960s, he, along with James R. Domengeaux when he was a State Representative from Lafayette, worked to establish the interest group CODOFIL, or le Conseil pour le développement du français en Louisiane (the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana) during the term of Governor John J. McKeithen.

LeBlanc spent years researching his genealogy, traveling to Canada, France and England, and succeeded in obtaining records which had formerly been sealed about his French ancestors who had migrated to Nova Scotia, Canada (formerly Acadia, French territory in the New World) then were exiled by the British in 1755. As a result of his research, LeBlanc wrote and published three books: The True Story of the Acadians in 1927, a revised "improved version" of the first book in 1932, and The Acadian Miracle in 1966. The books are considered to be seminal works in Acadian history and culture.

LeBlanc arranged three pilgrimages of "Evangeline girls" from Louisiana to Canada, stopping off at the White House along the way for official meetings with Presidents Herbert Hoover in 1930, Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936 and John F. Kennedy in 1963. The "Evangeline girls" were young women dressed alike in Acadian garb chosen by Acadian communities in Southwest Louisiana, each girl wearing a sash indicating the town she represented.

LeBlanc helped to make Louisiana the only English-French bilingual state in the nation through legislation to promote the speaking of French in school. LeBlanc's motivation was remembering his youth when he only spoke French and when school children in Southwest Louisiana were punished by teachers for speaking French in schools. Some children were made to kneel on corn kernels and others were slapped if they spoke French in school. LeBlanc wanted children to be proud, not ashamed, of their Cajun heritage, culture and language. LeBlanc was Cajun before Cajun was "cool."

LeBlanc's contributions to, and promotion of, Cajun culture, Southwest Louisiana around the world were deemed so important that his birth home, a small two-roomed Acadian-style wooden house built between 1821 and 1856, was relocated from his home in the LeBlanc community to Lafayette, Louisiana to the Acadian Village. This authentic re-creation of 19th century life in Southwest Louisiana is an open living museum featuring homes like Dudley LeBlanc's on a bayou in a 32-acre park, with exhibits, demonstrations and even a chapel where weddings are held.^[8]

Inventor of Hadacol famous patent medicine

Le Blanc invented a patent medicine he named "HADACOL" because he "had to call" it something, which became a best-selling patent medicine throughout the United States. Le Blanc devised never-before-seen marketing techniques to sell the medicine techniques never before seen in America. In 1996 a documentary film entitled "Cajun Renaissance Man" about the life of Le Blanc and his passion for his Acadian roots, his politics and his patent medicine was produced by his filmmaker granddaughter M. M. Le Blanc for PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) network and Louisiana Public Broadcasting.^[9]

LeBlanc's obituary

LeBlanc died of a massive stroke suffered at Abbeville General Hospital, where he had been admitted for emergency surgery for a gastric ulcer three days earlier.

Services were held on October 23, 1971, at St. Mary Magdalen Catholic Church in Abbeville. LeBlanc was a member of the Catholic Church and had donated the land on which St. Theresa Catholic Church of Abbeville stands. He was interred in the St. Mary Magdalen Parish Cemetery.

Survivors included his widow, the former Evelyn Hebert (1897–1992), a schoolteacher whom he married in 1919; four sons, Dudley J. LeBlanc, Jr. (born 1921), of Lafayette, Roland Francis LeBlanc, Sr. (born 1925), and Morgan E. LeBlanc (born 1938), both of Abbeville, and Jean B. LeBlanc (also born 1938) of Baton Rouge; two daughters, Mrs. Kay Jarrell (born 1927) of Lafayette and Mrs. Bertha Anne (James) Curley (born 1934) of Alexandria; two brothers, Oliver J. LeBlanc, the Lafayette Parish clerk of court, and Paul V. LeBlanc of New Orleans, and twenty-four grandchildren. Two other brothers preceded him in death; Preston LeBlanc and Raoul (Ralph) J. LeBlanc (1898–1970).

Louisiana Hall of Fame

The novelist and biographer Steven Longstreet compared LeBlanc with Huey Long, while LeBlanc was still living: "He's as good a speaker and as quick a thinker as Long was. But I don't think he has Long's streak of cruelty, and he has the quality that Long never had -- the ability to laugh at himself."

In 1993, LeBlanc was posthumously inducted into the maiden class as a member of the Louisiana Hall of Fame in the Louisiana Political Museum and Hall of Fame in Winnfield.^[10]

References

• William J. "Bill" Dodd, Peapatch Politics: The Earl Long Era in Louisiana Politics, Baton Rouge: Claitor's Publishing, 1991
• Obituaries of Dudley J. LeBlanc, Baton Rouge Morning Advocate, October 23, 1971; Lafayette Daily Advertiser October 22, 1971; New Orleans Times-Picayune, October 23, 1971
• http://www.sec.state.la.us/archives/leblanc/leblanc-1.htm
• http://ssdi.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/ssdi.cgianc
• Floyd Clay Martin, Coozan Dudley LeBlanc: From Huey Long to Hadacol
• http://www.alibris.com/search/search.cfm?S=R&qwork=1336975&qsort=p&siteID=KLVmR9fE2yU-LcsUdqTmR6Odz.nkB9F.IA
• Dudley J. LeBlanc, The True Story of the Acadians, Reprinted 1998 by Quintin Publications, Inc.
• http://www.acadian.org/leblanc.html
• http://www.lpb.org/education/classroom/itv/serdesc.cfm?SerID=15