Bob Hamm

A TRIBUTE TO GEORGE DUPUIS

By his friend & admirer:

Bob Hamm

George F. Dupuis, Sr. died Wednesday. George was one of the best friends I've ever had. This isn't easy for me to do, but I need to do it...because I'd like some of you who knew only the old political warrior to remember George the way I'll always remember him. This is sort of personal. Possibly the darkest time in my life happened one night in 1975, when my career exploded in my face and I made a pretty shameful departure from television. The next day, I was alone--more alone than I'd ever been before or ever been since. My whole world was painful and cold and I was sick and empty inside. George called. He didn't have any sympathetic words, or any admonitions to "cheer up, things could be worse" or any of the usual lame efforts to brighten a miserable life. He just said, in his big gruff voice, "come home, come eat. I been missing you." And I went, and Virginia cooked a ham and a turkey and a roast and some seafood and a table full of other food, and I got through the day. Next day, Vince Riehl got involved, and George M. Roy and Tommy Pears and B.I. Moody--and I rejoined the living. I'll always owe all of them. But the most important call I guess I ever got in my life was George Dupuis saying, "Come home. Come eat. I been missing you."

Let me tell you some things you probably don't know about George. I say you probably don't know these things about George because George didn't talk about himself. He lead one of the most remarkable lives of anyone I've ever known, but he really saw nothing remarkable about it, so he never talked about it. I tried. I tried to get him on tape. I tried to get him drunk and get him on tape. But, whether you recognized it or not, there was a humility there that transcended any I've ever known. Did you know George was a military hero? I have pictures of him taken during World War II. He was movie star handsome, then. And his experiences would have made a pretty good movie. George was in the thick of combat, and his plane was shot out from under him twice. I guess that was the beginning of the legend about his nine lives. He was awarded two purple hearts, the Air Medal with a cluster and the Distinguished Flying Cross...and was one of six young American heroes granted a private audience with the pope. He never talked about it. I found out about it when I was looking through an old scapbook for something else.

Not everyone loved George...mainly because he was a political animal. He knew only one way to play the game of politics. He played hard ball, and his only rule was that the end justified the means. His teachers were Senator Dudley LeBlanc, Judge Leander Perez, Governor Jimmy Davis, and the old Winnfield Wizard himself, Earl Long. George was part of the history that these men made. Sonny Mouton has commented that when Jimmy Davis was governor, George and Chris Faser ran the state. That's an exaggeration, but George was a power, and he brought good things home to Lafayette. One of them was Ambassador Caffery Parkway. He was crucified for that. But he stayed the course. Without George, we probably wouldn't have it, and Lafayette would be strangling in its own traffic.

George ramrodded the greatest medicine show on earth, Cuzain Dudley LeBlanc's Hadacol Caravan...He was Dudley's trouble shooter on that great adventure, and he became fast friends with people like Jack Dempsey, Casear Romero, Rudy Valley, Minnie Pearl, and Hank Williams. For over a quarter of a century, I begged him to tell me the tales of Judge Perez, the days on the road with Cuzain Dud, the days when he was key aide to Jimmy Davis, and the days when he and Virginia took care of Hank Williams when that great, tragic genius was incapable of caring for himself. He never did. He waived the bragging rights to stories most of us would have tracked people down to tell, and sat on 'em to make 'em listen. I was there when George was president of our school board, guiding it through its toughest times, using all the political savvy he had learned from his remarkable teachers. I remember when Governor Davis appointed him to the board, and the other members were so incensed that when he came to his first session, Virginia at his side as always, looking absolutely lovely...they didn't provide him with a seat. That board that didn't want him eventually elected him president...and he went on to become president of the state school board association.

Jimmy Prescott was executive secretary of the Louisiana School Board Association for many years, and Jimmy will tell you that George Dupuis was the most effective president that statewide organization has ever had. I was with George when John McKeithen sent a plane to bring him to Baton Rouge for the signing of a bill which not only gave teachers a pay raise...but, wonder of wonders, included a mechanism for funding the raise. The teachers knew that it was George's remarkable knowledge of the ins and outs of Baton Rouge politics that got them that much deserved and long overdue increase in their meager earnings.

I've been fortunate in that I've often been able to pay tribute to people while they could still hear the kind words. I wrote a feature article about George a few years ago for Senior Citizens News, and I'm glad I did that. Many years ago, I did a television commentary in praise of George Dupuis. You might remember that devastating tornado that his Crowley in the seventies. Within hours, without being asked, George had almost every piece of rolling stock he owned headed west on I-10 to help Crowley dig out of the disaster.

George Dupuis' deportment was disturbing to some, and his politics too strong for others. But there was a kind and generous side to this man. He helped more people than anyone will ever know--in tangible, measurable ways. And he always got the hell away from there before any of us could thank him...because that embarrassed him. George and I sat together many nights down in the Atchafalaya Basin, listening to the night sounds of the swamp...and sometimes in that quiet refuge, he opened up and let me see into his soul. There were good things there, like the great love for Virginia and the children, that he probably was never quite able to express to them. And other simple, decent things that he didn't have the words for. That was the other George Dupuis. I am deeply grateful that I knew them both.

George had at least nine lives. The Germans shot him once over Africa and once over Italy, and a few years ago he went to the bottom of the Mississippi River trapped in a helicopter by a malfunctioning seat belt. He only had one lung, and it wasn't a very good one. Various parts of his body wore out a long time ago, but his indomitable spirit kept on going. I use to say after each near brush with death, and he had a lot of them, that the Lord wasn't ready for him, and the devil didn't figure he could cope with him. Wednesday, the Lord decided he wanted him.

Here's your Governor, George, and here's your song. You knew I'd play it for you.

(JIMMY DAVIS' RECORDING OF "SUPPERTIME")

~@N

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