Camille Gravel

Camille Francis Gravel, Jr. (August 10, 1915 – December 23, 2005), was an attorney and Democratic politician from Alexandria, Louisiana.

Gravel spent much time and money supporting the Roman Catholic Church. Pope Pius XII honored him with the "Order of St. Gregory" for his service to the church.

Education

Gravel graduated in 1935 from the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. From 1937 to 1939, he attended law school at the Paul M. Hebert Law Center of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge and The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., but he once explained that he just could not stick to the books. At a time when a legal degree was not required to become a lawyer, Gravel "read for the law" and passed the bar exam in 1940.^[1]

Gravel introduced Louis Berry, the first African-American lawyer to have been admitted to the Alexandria Bar Association. Berry later said that no other white attorney in Alexandria agreed to introduce him.^[2]

The 1948 Democratic Convention

Gravel was an early civil rights activist who was derided by Louisiana segregationist Democrats in the 1950s as an "integrationist." He attracted national attention when he led the loyal Louisiana Democratic delegation to the 1948 national convention in Philadelphia, when delegates from Mississippi and half of the Alabama contingent walked out in protest of a civil rights plank in the party platform supported by the nominee, U. S. President Harry S. Truman.^[3]

Oddly, Gravel in the fall of 1948 was the elector for the Eighth Congressional District committed to then Governor Strom Thurmond, the official Democratic presidential nominee in Louisiana, running regionally on a States Rights' Party ticket against Truman and Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York. Another Thurmond elector was Leander Perez, Gravel's longtime intraparty rival from Plaquemines Parish.^[4]

In 1952, Gravel was again a Democratic Party elector committed to Governor Adlai E. Stevenson of Illinois. The Stevenson-John Sparkman slate won in Louisiana that year.^[5]

By the late 1950s, when the state's political war cry was segregation, Gravel was one of the prominent white political figures who did not join the segregationist forces. "Purely as a moral proposition, I think segregation is wrong," he said in 1959.

Advisor to three governors

Gravel worked in the national Democratic organization on behalf of Stevenson in both 1952and 1956.^[6] He was a confidant and adviser to Governors Earl Kemp Long, John McKeithen, and Edwin Washington Edwards.

In 1955, Earl Long had selected Gravel to run for state attorney general in 1956, but the job paid little, and Gravel, who was rearing a large family, turned down the offer. The position went instead to the Democrat Jack P.F. Gremillion of Baton Rouge, who served from 1956 to 1972.

John McKeithen named Gremillion to investigate Mafia influence on state government, as reported in an expose in Life Magazine, but Gremillion disclosed no corroborating evidence of criminal activity. McKeithen also tapped Camille Gravel to investigate the question. Gravel suddenly left the committee in disgust when it was halted from further work after the chief target became C. H. "Sammy" Downs, another Alexandria lawyer, former state senator from Rapides Parish, and a key player in the McKeithen administration. The Gravel probe was continued by East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney Sargent Pitcher, and he too found no evidence of organized crime having infiltrated state government but two questionable telephone calls admitted to by the former McKeithen advisor Aubrey W. Young.^[7]

In Edwin Edwards' first two terms as governor most of his proposed legislation was drafted by Gravel. Gravel returned as Edwards' counsel for his third term starting in 1984, but when Edwards was indicted for the first time on federal racketeering charges in 1985, Gravel left the governor's staff to work as his co-defense counsel. Gravel also served on Edwards' defense teams when he was convicted of racketeering in 2000.

In 1979, Gravel succeeded in obtaining the acquittal of former Congressman Otto E. Passman of Monroe from charges of fraud, conspiracy, accepting an illegal gratuity, and tax evasion associated with the allegation that he had received $213,000 in illegal gifts from the South Korean lobbyist Tongsun Park in a scandal called Koreagate.^[8]

Friendship with the Kennedy family

Former Louisiana state senator, gubernatorial candidate, secretary of state, and insurance commissioner James H. "Jim" Brown recalls how Gravel became friends with the Kennedys:

Louisiana Constitutional Convention, 1973

Jim Brown also noted the pivotal role that Gravel played in the Louisiana Constitutional Convention of 1973.

Death and family

Gravel's parents werer Camille Francis Gravel, Sr., and the former Aline Delvaille. Two days before Christmas in 2005, Gravel died at Naomi Heights Nursing Home in Alexandria, where he had been residing for several months. He had undergone heart valve replacement surgery eleven months earlier at St. Frances Cabrini Hospital in Alexandria. The surgery left him in a coma. Soon his kidneys began to malfunction, and doctors performed a second surgery to determine the reasons for renal failure. In this surgery, doctors removed a blood clot. and determined that he had also suffered a stroke.^[9]

Gravel's funeral mass was conducted on December 27, 2005, at St. Francis Xavier Cathedral in downtown Alexandria.^[9]

On November 26, 1939, Gravel wed the former Katherine David, who died in 1979. The couple had eleven children, eight of whom were living as of January 2012: Grady David Gravel of Lafayette, Mark Alan Gravel of Alexandria, and Charles Gregory Gravel and his wife, Elycia, of Alexandria; Ann G. Vanderslice and her husband, Stephen J. Vanderslice of Alexandria; Eileen G. Cappel and her husband, Richard B, Cappel, of Lake Charles; Martha G. Antoon and her husband, attorney Thomas A. Antoon of Alexandria; Virginia G. Carbo of Alexandria, and Margaret Lynn Gravel of Alexandria. The three deceased children were Richard Alvin Gravel, Camille F. Gravel, III, and Eunice Holloman Gravel.^[10]

Charles "Greg" Gravel (born November 1955) was an unsuccessful Democratic candidate in the primary election held on November 4, 2014 for the Division G seat on the 9th Judicial District Court held by Harry Randow.^[11] He and Randow, who each drew 23.2 percent of the vote, lost to the Republican candidate, Greg Beard, who led the field with 18,405 ballots (53.6 percent).^[12]

Gravel's second wife, whom he married in 1980, was the former Evelyn Gianfala (1922-2012), a native of Berwick in St. Mary Parish, who was the president of Gianfala & Son Oil Field Construction Company. She was also a former chairman of the Louisiana State Board of Tax Appeals and a one-time legislative assistant to State Senators William Cleveland and Jamar Adcock of Monroe. Evelyn Gravel was a supporter of live theatre, having served on the boards of the Little Theatres of Alexandria and Crowley and the Swine Palace Theatre in Baton Rouge.^[10]

Gravel's legacy

Jim Brown said that Gravel's influence on the legal profession and the political landscape of the state was "overwhelming. He has been, for many years, hands down one of the best criminal lawyers in the country."

Starting in 1976 and continuing through 1979, Gravel worked with Robert G. Vernon and Duane Yates to form the Louisiana Music Commission. This commission has served as the model for other states. It created the first "stand-alone" music commission in the nation.

In 1995, Gravel was inducted into the Louisiana Political Museum and Hall of Fame in Winnfield.^[13]

In its edition of April 29, 2007, Gravel's hometown newspaper, Alexandria Daily Town Talk declared that Gravel, along with U.S. Representative Gillis William Long and the American Civil War General William T. Sherman, were the three most significant persons of history associated with Alexandria.^[14]

References

• William J. "Bill" Dodd, Peapatch Politics, Baton Rouge: Claitor's Publishing, 1991
• http://www.shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050211/NEWS01/502110330/1002/NEWS Shreveport Times: Camille Gravel, Jr., in hospital in critical condition]
• The Daily Advertiser: Camille Gravel, adviser to Louisiana governors, dies at 90
• Who's Who in America, 1975 edition
• Alexandria City Data