Charles T. Beaird

Charles Thomas Beaird
Charles T. Beaird
Member, Caddo Parish Police Jury (or county commission)
In office 1956–1960
Personal details
Born	July 17, 1922(1922-07-17) Shreveport, Louisiana, USA
Died	April 18, 2006(2006-04-18) (aged 83)
Political party	Republican
Spouse(s)	Carolyn Williams Beaird (1923-2006, married 1943-2006)
Children	Susan Lynn Beaird (1943), Marjorie Beaird Seawell (1947), and John Benjamin Beaird (1950) of Shreveport
Occupation	Industrialist, college professor, newspaper publisher, philanthropist
Religion	Non-theist
Champion of civil rights within the Republican Party

Charles Thomas Beaird of Shreveport, Louisiana, was an industrialist, newspaper publisher, philanthropist and civic leader. He was a self-identified "liberal Republican" politician and a champion of civil rights. Born to James Benjamin Beaird and Mattie Connell Fort Beaird, his mother died six weeks after his birth, and his father died when he was sixteen. According to his obituary, Beaird had to grow up quickly but developed a fierce intellectual independence.

Military service

On February 5, 1943, he was commissioned into the United States Marine Corps in Corpus Christi, Texas. He married Carolyn in Shreveport the next day and reported for duty in Fort Worth, on February, 8. He served first as a pilot instructor and then led a fighting squadron assigned to the recapture and holding of the Philippine Islands flying B-25s and the OS 2U torpedo bomber. He attained the rank of captain and earned the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Decorated Air Medal.

Early business ventures

In 1946, Beaird returned to Shreveport, where he became vice president of the J. B. Beaird Company, which his father had begun as a welding service in 1918. During the war, the company had grown to be a major manufacturer of metal products, with his older brother, J. Pat Beaird, Sr., as president. Charles Beaird worked there as a youth sweeping floors, so he knew the business, a process that he would duplicate in his future enterprises.

Following the sale of that company, Beaird purchased a small chainsaw company founded by Claude Poulan and his brothers and renamed it Beaird-Poulan. Beard built the company into the fourth largest maker of chainsaws in the world. When it was purchased by Emerson Electric in 1973, Beaird became chairman of the Beaird-Poulan Division of Emerson, known for its WeedEater products.

Political career

In 1952, Beaird joined childhood friends in an effort to create a viable Republican Party in Shreveport, which had been an all-Democratic city since Reconstruction. Beaird became chairman of the Caddo Parish Republican Executive Committee in 1952. In 1956, he was elected to the Caddo Parish Police Jury (equivalent of county commission). He was one of the first Republicans elected to public office in Louisiana since Reconstruction. He was elected at the local level as there was no Republican gubernatorial candidate running in the 1956 general election. Later that year, he managed the unsuccessful Fourth District congressional campaign of then Republican Littleberry Calhoun Allen, Jr., who challenged incumbent Overton Brooks. After switching to Democrat, Allen later won election as Shreveport's public utilities commissioner (1962–1970) and mayor (1970–1978).

Beaird attracted national attention in 1956, when he gave a seconding speech for the renomination of President Dwight D. Eisenhower at the Republican National Convention at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, California. In 1960, he was one of the ten elector candidates in Louisiana for the Nixon/Lodge ticket. Though he entered politics as a conservative, his wife and children and experiences gradually changed him into a liberal. However, unlike Calhoun Allen, he did not join the Democratic Party — he remained a liberal voice in the more conservative Louisiana GOP.

Education

He graduated from C. E. Byrd High School in Shreveport and attended Culver Military Academy in Culver, Indiana, where he joined the Black Horse Troop. He enrolled at the University of Michigan and joined Alpha Tau Omega fraternity and transferred to the University of Texas. With the outbreak of World War II, Beaird returned to Shreveport and enrolled at Centenary College. He met Carolyn there while waiting to enlist in the Naval Air training program.

Fascinated with philosophy, he re-enrolled at Centenary College, where he was already a trustee, earning his B.A. in 1966. He became a Woodrow Wilson Fellow and was accepted in Columbia University where he earned his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1972 at the age of 50. He returned as assistant professor of philosophy at Centenary College, where he taught for seven years and was inducted into the Centenary Alumni Hall of Fame.

Civic leadership

Beaird was a director of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Texas; a director of Winthrop Rockefeller's Winrock Enterprises in Arkansas, a member of the Young Presidents Organization; a partner in Westport Real Estate; a founder of the Centenary College Committee of 100; chair of the Citizens Committee on Desegregation for the Caddo Parish Schools; chair of the United Fund Campaign; vice president of the Shreveport Chamber of Commerce, and co-chair of Shreveport's Biracial Commission.

The Shreveport Journal

A trustee for the American Rose Foundation, his affection for the rose figured prominently in his next enterprise, the now defunct Shreveport Journal which he bought in 1976 from the Douglas F. Attaway (1910–1994) family. He changed it from a conservative paper, which, under former editor George W. Shannon endorsed conservative Democrats and Republicans candidates, into a liberal one, rarely endorsing Republicans for office. Its symbol, the rose, adorned the brief, complimentary verbal "roses" the Journal awarded on its editorial page, and a real rose was always pinned to his lapel.

Under his leadership, the Journal crusaded for the fluoridation of Shreveport's water supply, accomplished through the efforts of the Republican Utilities Commissioner Billy J. Guin ( 1977-1978). Unlike other Louisiana newspaper publishers, Beaird championed labor unions, a rare phenomenon in the South.

When the Shreveport Journal, an afternoon paper, ceased daily publication in 1991, Beaird won a unique agreement with Gannett Co., owner of the morning Shreveport Times with which the Journal had a joint operating agreement, to run "Journalpage" an editorial opinion page six days a week in The Times. "Journalpage" was a 1994 finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in Editorial Writing for a series on decriminalization of drugs. "Journalpage" continued until Beaird's death.

Philanthropy

The Beaird Tower in downtown Shreveport; in the forefront is Holy Trinity Catholic Church.

Beaird's last career was in real estate, including the downtown Shreveport Beaird Tower, with one of his symbolic roses at its top.

He and Carolyn were philanthropists], but the extent of their personal giving may never be fully known because much was done anonymously. They endowed two chairs at Centenary College and one at Union Theological Seminary in New York. They helped to restore the historic Strand Theatre in downtown Shreveport and supported the McAdoo Hotel, serving the homeless, and the Buckhalter Hotel, for recovering alcoholics. They endowed the educational building at Galilee Baptist Church. They were leaders in the American Rose Center endowment trust. He served on the board of the D. L. Dykes, Jr., Foundation (in memory of the pastor of the First United Methodist Church, who was Beaird's friend). He fought to improve housing and living conditions in Ledbetter Heights, one of Shreveport's most impoverished neighborhoods.

The nonprofit Charles T. Beaird Foundation, created in 1960, is guided by a board drawn from the Beaird family, has donated millions to local nonprofit organizations.

Grave of Charles T. Beaird in Forest Park Cemetery

Beaird received:

• Liberty Bell Award from the Shreveport Bar Association
• Philanthropist of the Year Award from the Association of Fund Raising Professionals
• Jacques Napier Steinau Award of the National Conference of Christians and Jews
• Ralph Waldo Emerson Award given by All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church.

While Carolyn was a devoted Presbyterian, Beaird was a "nontheist," meaning that the concept of God was not among the ideas on which he based his beliefs.

Beaird's survivors included three children: Susan Lynn Beaird (born 1943) of Shreveport; Marjorie Beaird Seawell (born 1947) of Denver, and John Benjamin Beaird (born 1950).

The Beairds are interred in Shreveport's Forest Park Cemetery off St. Vincent Avenue.

See also

	Biography portal
	United States Marine Corps portal

References

• The Center for Families homepage. Accessed May 16, 2006.
• The Charles T. Beaird Foundation homepage. Accessed May 16, 2006.
• Obituary. KPLC TV. Accessed May 16, 2006.
• April 20, 2006: Obituary. Shreveport Times. Accessed May 16, 2006.
• Pender, Geoff, and Wilemon, Tom (April 18, 2006): "Dedicated to the people of South Mississippi: Three named finalists for editorials". Sun Herald. Accessed May 16, 2006.
• "Charles T. Beaird Endowed Professorships" at Centenary College. Accessed May 16, 2006.
• http://www.sos.louisiana.gov:8090/cgibin/?rqstyp=elcms2&rqsdta=030888

Persondata
Name	Beaird, Charles T.
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	July 27, 1922
Place of birth	Shreveport, Louisiana, USA
Date of death	April 18, 2006
Place of death