Fred Preaus

Frederick Tidwell Preaus, known as Fred Preaus (April 25, 1912 – July 13, 1987),^[1][2] was a businessman and politician from the U.S. state of Louisiana, a native of Farmerville, the seat of government of Union Parish near the Arkansas state line. He was an unsuccessful Democratic candidate in the 1956 Louisiana gubernatorial election.

Background

Descended from a pioneer Union Parish family of French, German, and English origin, Fred Preaus was the older of two sons of Harry Preaus, Sr. (1887-1951), and the former Sallie Tidwell (1887-1951), the daughter of David C Tidwell, a prominent planter from Sterlington in Ouachita Parish, who died in 1921, and the former Mary Etta Daniel (1859-1956), a native of Mer Rouge in Morehouse Parish.^[3][4] Sallie Preaus was the first woman to register to vote in Union Parish with ratification in 1920 of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution.^[5] Preaus's maternal uncle was Charles Ruffin Tidwell (1894-1967), a former streets and parks commissioner for Monroe, Louisiana, when that city operated under the city commission form of government.^[3]

In 1933, Preaus graduated from Louisiana Tech University in nearby Ruston in Lincoln Parish.^[6] In 1953, Preaus was the president of the Louisiana Tech Alumni Association.

Fred Preaus and his only sibling, Harry Preaus, Jr., a United States Navy lieutenant during World War II, became partners in 1946 in the still operating Preaus Motor Company in their hometown of Farmerville, Louisiana.

Right out of college, Preaus purchased the Mitchell Ford dealership in Farmerville, which also sold Mercury automobiles. In 1946, he opened a new building for the company, and his brother, Harry Preaus, Jr. (1915-1998), joined him as a partner. After their retirements, Joe and John Preaus took over the company.^[7]

Preaus was elected to the five-member Farmerville Town Council in 1949^[8] and was active in the chamber of commerce. In 1952, incoming Governor Robert F. Kennon appointed Preaus as the state highway director.^[5][9] Along with State Senator B. R. Patton and State Representative T. T. Fields, Preaus worked to make Lake D'Arbonne in Farmerville a reality. Popular with fisherman and boaters, the waterway opened in 1963.^[10][11] In 1947, Preaus was president of the Union Parish Fair.^[12]

Preaus was also engaged in the timber business. Preaus and J. A. Auger (1911–2010), an inductee of the Loggers Hall of Fame,^[13] together developed the first chip mill in Farmerville.^[14]

Run for governor

In 1955, Preaus, with the backing of Kennon, who was ineligible to seek a second consecutive four-year term, declared his candidacy for governor.^[15] Preaus's platform stressed law enforcement with use of the Louisiana National Guard as needed,^[16] industrial development, tidelands oil revenues, long-range highway planning, no state tax increases, greater independence for local governments, expanded facilities for mental and tuberculosis patients, $65 per month welfare payments to the elderly or needy, the dredging of twenty new lakes,^[5] and the maintenance of racial segregation.^[17] He claimed that the NAACP civil rights organization was upsetting the "goodwill" that existed in Louisiana between the races.^[18]

For lieutenant governor, Preaus allied with New Orleans City Council member A. Brown Moore, a 1934 graduate of the Tulane University Law School who had served in Judge Advocate General's Corps of General George S. Patton's Third Army during World War II. Prior to the formation of the mayor-council form of government, Moore was from 1950 to 1954 the New Orleans public utilities commissioner. Then from 1954 to 1957, he was a city councilman. DeLesseps Story Morrison was the mayor throughout the decade and a first-time gubernatorial candidate in 1956. Previously, Brown had carried the support of all Democratic political factions and daily newspapers in New Orleans.^[5][19]

A media announcer mispronounced his name as PROASE, rather than PROOSE (rhymes with "moose"), a fact recalled by the NBC announcer, Bill Monroe.^[20]

Opponent Earl Kemp Long belittled Preaus, who had the reputation as a scrupulously honest, small-town car dealer and church deacon:

Fred Preaus is an honest man. If I were buying a Ford car, I'd buy it from Fred Preaus. He would give me a good deal. If I had trouble with the car, he'd give me a loaner while he got it fixed — that's just the kind of man he is. But if I was buying two Fords — well, he's just not big enough to handle a deal that size.^[21][22]

Long's remarks about Preaus were still being recalled as recently as 2011. Long inadvertently turned Preaus into something of a celebrity.^[23]

Late in 1955, Preaus said that if he were elected governor he would want the Democratic presidential nominee in 1956 to run under the rooster emblem, unlike in 1948 when President Harry Truman was placed under the national donkey emblem and lost Louisiana's electoral votes to Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who was named the official Democratic nominee in the state. Preaus said that he had ruled out supporting at least one potential Democratic candidate, Governor G. Mennen Williams of Michigan, who announced that he favored stripping all federal aid to those states that maintain racial segregation.^[24]

In a January 1956 speech carried by radio and television, Kennon minimized the chances of any of the "other anti-Long candidates" to defeat former Governor Earl Long in a potential runoff election. "The only man who can beat Earl Long in the runoff [which was not required] is Fred Preaus, and the only man Earl is afraid of in this race is Fred Preaus," Kennon quipped.^[25] Kennon gave a running prediction of how he expected to vote to divide throughout the state, but he badly misjudged the forthcoming election results in which Long won without need for a second primary.^[25]

Considered a dark horse candidate from the start,^[26] Preaus was unable to make much headway in the race against Long but carried one parish — not his own Union Parish, but Plaquemines Parish, then dominated by the political boss Leander Perez, a Dixiecrat in 1948 and one of Preaus's most determined backers.^[27] Preaus finished in third place in the race with 95,955 votes (11.7 percent), trailing Mayor Morrison, who made the first of his three unsuccessful gubernatorial races, and Earl Long, who won the second of his three non-consecutive terms as Louisiana governor. Lagging behind Preaus were former state police superintendent Francis Grevemberg, and James M. McLemore, an Alexandria landowner and cattleman who made a second bid for governor, once again as a particularly avowed segregationist candidate.^[28][29] Meanwhile, A. Brown Moore lost to Long's choice for lieutenant governor, Lether Frazar, a prominent educator from Lake Charles.

Personal life

In 1936, Preaus married the former Mona Gill (1912–1996) at the First Presbyterian Church in Ruston, Louisiana.^[30] Mona Preaus subsequently died in Baton Rouge at the age of eighty-three. Preause, his parents, wife, and brother are interred at the Farmerville Cemetery.^[31] The Preauses' older son, attorney Frederick Fauntleroy Preaus (1937–2006), died in San Diego, California, at the age of sixty-nine. Prior to moving to San Diego, F. F. Preaus resided in New Orleans. The younger son, attorney Eugene R. Preaus (born 1941) and wife, Ann K. Preaus, were residing in New Orleans as of 2006.^[32]

Preaus's grandfather or great-uncle, District Attorney^[33] Frederick F. Preaus (1853-1911) of Lincoln and Union parishes,^[31] was a native of Indiana. About 1905, he built the Preaus House on Academy Street in Farmerville. With elaborately constructed with balustrades and columns, the house has been well-maintained.^[34][35] Along with the Selig-Neely House, the Preaus House is on the annual tour of the Historical District Association of Farmerville.

The automobile dealership is still known as Preaus Motor Company.^[36]

References