Grove Stafford

David Grove Stafford, Sr., known as Grove Stafford (September 26, 1897 – June 21, 1975), was an attorney in Alexandria, Louisiana, who represented Rapides Parish as a Democrat in the Louisiana State Senate for two terms from 1940 to 1948 during the administrations of Governors Sam Houston Jones and Jimmie Davis. Under Davis, Stafford was the State Senate President Pro Tempore.^[1]

Descended from two prominent families, Stafford was the fifth of eight children of Leroy Augustus Stafford, Jr. (1869-1923), an Alexandria native and a graduate of the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. His grandfather, also named Leroy Augustus Stafford, was a general for the Confederate States of America in the Civil War who was mortally wounded in the Battle of the Wilderness. His uncle, David Theophilus Stafford, was a four-term Rapides Parish sheriff from 1888 to 1904.^[2] Stafford's mother, the former Bertha Moore Hyams (1870-1959), was a granddaughter of Louisiana Civil War Governor Thomas Overton Moore. The youngest of Stafford's siblings, Thomas Overton Moore Stafford (1905-1973),^[3] was an uncle by marriage of the late U.S. Representative Harold B. McSween of Louisiana's 8th congressional district, since disbanded.^[4]

Grove Stafford and his wife, the former Emily Gaiennie (1903-1974), had four children, Alexandria attorney Grove Stafford, Jr.; Emily Stafford Brame McNeely (1926-1997), who died in Crowley in Acadia Parish; Margaret "Patti" Daniel, and George Mason Graham Stafford.^[5]

Stafford was succeeded in the state Senate in 1948 by C. H. "Sammy" Downs and the return of Earl Kemp Long to the governorship.^[1] He subsequently served on the Louisiana State University Board of Supervisors in the administration of Long's second successor, Robert F. Kennon. He was a defendant in the appeal of a suit brought forth from 1953 to 1955 against LSU by the African-American civil rights attorney A. P. Tureaud of New Orleans.^[6]

Stafford died in Alexandria at the age of seventy-eight and is interred at Greenwood Memorial Park in Pineville, alongside his wife.^[5]

Grove Stafford, Jr. (born December 1928), a Republican,^[7] graduated from the Tulane University School of Law in New Orleans and is affiliated with the Alexandria firm Stafford, Stewart and Potter,^[8] formerly Stafford and Pitts.

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