Theo Cangelosi

Theodore F. "Theo" Cangelosi (December 14, 1911 - July 14, 1992) was a Baton Rouge attorney, banker, businessman, a former Democratic member of the Louisiana House of Representatives, and a confidant of Governors Earl Kemp Long and John J. McKeithen.

Cangelosi was descended from an old-line Italian-American family in Baton Rouge. In 1934, he graduated from the Louisiana State University Law School. He served in the state House for a single term from 1940-1944 during the administration of the anti-Long Governor Sam Houston Jones. In July 1942, he enlisted in the United States Army at Camp Beauregard near Pineville in Rapides Parish. He was the first enlisted man ever to become a Judge Advocate General at the rank of first lieutenant. He remained in the legislature until his term ended though he was actually in the military for the last two years.

Cangelosi was a high-profile supporter of Earl Long in the latter's 1948 election to a full-term as governor. In that campaign, Long trounced former Governor Sam Jones, who was attempting a comeback.

Long named Cangelosi to the influential LSU Board of Supervisors, Cangelosi at first opposed a stadium addition approved by the legislature in 1952. He agreed with colleague Margaret Dixon, managing editor of the Baton Rouge Morning Advocate, who suggested that a new library would be preferable to an enclosed LSU stadium. The legislature, explained LSU President Troy Middleton, had approved the stadium, not a new library. So Cangelosi and Dixon were recommending policy beyond the scope of the LSU administration. The stadium hence triumphed.

Though he was Earl Long's regular attorney, Louisiana First Lady Blanche R. Long tried to retain him in 1959 to file separation papers against Earl Long. Caught in the crossfire before the two Longs, Cangelosi first tried and without success to reconcile the couple. Long began to distrust Cangelosi and called Joseph A. Sims of Hammond to perform several legal maneuvers to get Long removed from confinement in the Southeast Louisiana Hospital, the mental facility in Mandeville, where Long had been admitted against his wishes through the intervention of his wife. Earl Long died in September 1960, still separated from Blanche and reportedly involved with the controversial stripper, Blaze Starr.

In 1964, Cangelosi was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention, which met in Atlantic City, New Jersey, to confirm the Lyndon B. Johnson-Hubert Humphrey ticket.

In 1965, Governor McKeithen appointed Cangelosi chairman of the newly-established Louisiana State Science Foundation, with former Shreveport Mayor James C. Gardner as the vice-chairman. The foundation was designed to fund research proposals submitted by the private Gulf South Research Institute, a creation of the interest group called Council for a Better Louisiana. One of the research projects funded was to investigate possible uses of bagasse, the dry pulp remaining from sugar cane after the juice has been extracted. Cangelosi knew the state bureaucracy and was able to get the new foundation an office constructed in New Orleans. When Cangelosi had a major illness in October 1966, Gardner moved up to the chairmanship

McKeithen also tapped Cangelosi to serve on a committee to oversee the design of the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans.

Cangelosi was married to the former Kathleen Flores Webre (born ca. 1940 and presumably a second wife). The obituary lists ten children, only one named "Cangelosi", seventeen grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren at the time of Cangelosi's death in Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge.

References

http://ssdi.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/ssdi.cgi?lastname=CANGELOSI&start=321

Cangelosi obituary, "Baton Rouge Morning Advocate", July 16, 1992, p. 11A

http://library.uno.edu/help/subguide/louis/inventories/225.htm

http://www.sec.state.la.us/archives/italian2001/italian2001-public.htmm (Group photo with John McKeithen, Hale Boggs, and Lyndon B. Johnson)

http://www.lib.lsu.edu/special/williams/abstracts/university/taylor.htm

http://books.google.com/books?id=xxrXgg1WIPkC&pg=PA258&lpg=PA258&dq=theo+cangelosi&source=web&ots=FsS2B12N5o&sig=hw7Y_8ScycfBLbagQ9hjw-W1NCw

http://books.google.com/books?id=rPrkseaVX-IC&pg=PA327&lpg=PA327&dq=theo+cangelosi&source=web&ots=qPxZJ2i5Jj&sig=xByI3VjcNPOoa1xvnX0atCtIXOU

James C. Gardner, "Jim Gardner and Shreveport, Vol. 2 (1959-2006)", (Shreveport: Ritz Publications, Sarah Hudson-Pierce, 2006), pp. 80-83

http://books.google.com/books?id=oTxrbmJTNAUC&pg=PA111&lpg=PA111&dq=theo+cangelosi&source=web&ots=0DNkFiHRXL&sig=OGO9_avwHE3cppoc4Gy5Uo9ao-o

http://www.reggiefamilyarchives.com/index.php?option=com_restaurant&Itemid=26&func=detail&id=1277