Huey P. Long

“ They fell deeply in love and were married in December 1933. In midsummer of 1935 their son, the third Carl Austin Weiss, was born, and the sense of fulfillment this kindled in the happy young parents was no greater than the affection lavished on him by his grandparents.
That same Sunday morning Huey Long ordered breakfast sent up from the capitol cafeteria to his twenty-fourth-floor suite. He telephoned Earle Christenberry in New Orleans, reminding him of their engagement concerning the income-tax return that must be filed before another seven days passed. ”

“ It was never meant to convert economists, financiers, and magnates. On the contrary, its principal purpose was to notify all and sundry, especially “all,” that Huey Long was a candidate for president and was confident of victory.
During that early autumn of 1935 the United States stood at a windy corner of world history. In Europe totalitarians had taken over Italy’s tottering liberal monarchy in 1922, and in 1933 the “republic” of Germany. In Louisiana a home-grown fascist with complete dominance over his own state was challenging the national leadership. ”

“ He was married in 1961, and early in 1962 was called to active military service, being assigned as an air-force surgeon with the rank of captain to duty at Barksdale Field. This base is in Bossier parish, Louisiana, directly across the Red River from Shreveport, the city where Huey Long was married and where Russell Long was born. Thus the son of Carl Weiss was practicing medicine in Louisiana at the time the son of Huey Long won an overwhelming victory there in a campaign for the Senate seat formerly held by his father. ”

“ The Senator was due to make one of his fiery radio broadcasts over a state-wide hookup that night at eight in the Roosevelt Hotel. After a late lunch at the Heidelberg Hotel coffee shop he read the first installment of a biographical sketch of his career which had just appeared on the newsstands that day in the Saturday Evening Post. Then at length, with a group of friends and a cadre of bodyguards to see him off, he left for New Orleans. The bystanders urged him in parting to “pour it on ’em, Kingfish ... give ’em hell, Huey, you’re just the boy that can do it!” ”

“ To enact such legislation as may be necessary to provide for the raising of additional public revenue by the levy of an occupation-license or privilege tax upon the privilege of engaging in the business or occupation of refining, heating, cracking or distilling petroleum, petroleum oil, oils or other minerals, and to provide for the levy of such license or privilege tax upon the privilege of engaging in the business or occupation or otherwise manufacturing products out of petroleum, petroleum oil, oils, or other minerals. ”

“ Then they repaired to Lafayette Square when their hour of demanded presence was up, and joked about the way they would put out of joint the noses of the anti-Long leadership on election day; for of course most of them were dedicated Share-Our-Wealthers eagerly looking forward to $5000-a-year incomes when Huey Long got around to redistributing the nation’s wealth.
Meanwhile their Kingfish was giving the anti-Long leaders a real Roland—an entire battalion of Rolands, in fact—for their patronage Oliver. The spoils-system theory of a patronage plum is that its bestowal is good for three votes ”

“ Thereupon he returned at once to New Orleans.
Dr. Rives’s account of his experiences clearly illustrates on what he based his opinion that the procedure was “chaotic.”
“Dr. Maes and I were taken into a room next to the one Huey was in,” he related, “and there I stopped. Dr. Maes was taken on into the patient’s room, while I got off into a corner, making myself inconspicuous. At this time there was still no suggestion that anyone but Dr. Weiss had shot or even could have shot Huey Long. Meanwhile, people were going in and out of the sickroom, apparently at will. ”

“ Tom Bird—a fellow physician—and above all, to Huey Long himself, a man whose memory for names and faces was truly phenomenal.
While Carl Weiss could well have been a crusader for any idealistic cause, it is difficult to accept unreservedly the proposition that one who had so very much to live for, whose happiness was so nearly complete, the best and most rewarding years of whose life still lay in the future, would give up all this and burden his conscience with two mortal sins—murder and what was tantamount to self-destruction—for an abstract concept of the general good. ”

“ These would be headed by House Bill Number One, the anti-Pavy gerrymander, and a somewhat similar measure which was designed to keep Congressman J. Y. Sanders, Jr., from returning to his home in Baton Rouge to run for a judgeship. His father, a former governor and congressman, stood at the very head of Huey Long’s bête noire list. Another measure high on Long’s “must” roster made provision for the fact that his current senatorial term would expire unless renewed in the fall of 1936 by re-election. ”

“ First prize for one of his cake-baking contests in Shreveport was awarded to pretty Rose McConnell. Not long thereafter, she and Huey were married. With all his savings and a substantial loan from his older brother Julius, he managed to finance nearly a year of special study at Tulane University’s law school in New Orleans. He and Rose shared a room in a private home not far from the university, where among other furnishings, a rented typewriter was installed. ”

“ Within twenty-four hours of the most elaborate funeral ever held in Louisiana, attended by approximately 150,000 participants in the solemn rites of lamentation, Huey’s Praetorian Guard were up in arms against one another. Ready to yield instant obedience to their Kingfish, they were one and all determined never to render such homage to anyone of their own subordinate rank. ”

“ Sheriff Coleman testified that he struck twice with his fist before firing on Weiss and that “the first time I missed him and struck someone else, but the second time I hit him and knocked him down when Roden was grappling with him.” Conceivably, the “someone else” of the first blow could have been Huey Long, although none of the other eyewitnesses mention such a blow. As for the remainder of the investigation, only one brief moment of emotional tension marked its course. That was when the Rev. Gerald L. K. Smith, a paid organizer of the Share-Our-Wealth movement, took the stand. ”

“ Still others, and among these are many of the physicians and nurses who knew Dr. Weiss well, feel certain to this day that he did not fire a shot at all, that he was not the sort of person who could have brought himself to take the life of another human being. It is their contention that Dr. Weiss merely threatened to strike the Kingfish with his fist—may indeed have done so, since Long did reach the hospital with an abrasion of the lip after he was rushed from the capitol to Our Lady of the Lake Sanitarium. ”

“ One day some of the VIP’s of the Long political hierarchy were gathered in the office of Governor Oscar Allen when a matter of legislative procedure was under discussion. It is worth noting for the record that the Governor’s chair was occupied by Senator Huey Long. Governor Allen sat at one side of his desk. The names of the others do not matter. Among them were highway commissioners, a state purchasing agent, floor leaders from House and Senate, the head of an upstate levee board, and the like. ”

“ According to the laboratory report incorporated in the hospital chart, J. A. Vitiano, Eddie Knoblock, Colonel Rougon, J. R. Pollett, M. E. Bird, George Castigliola, and Paul Voitier were marked “incompatible”; C. J. Campbell, John Kirsch, “no name,” Joe Bates, Senator Noe, Bill Melton, and a Mr. Walker were found to be compatible. In addition, “no name,” Bates, Noe, and Melton were also marked with an “O.K.”
Senator Noe was the first and apparently only donor, and it is my recollection that we met in the Heidelberg Hotel elevator Monday night when he told me he had “just given blood to Huey.” ”

“ If the only Democrat I could produce was a truck driver, all right. Huey would have a truck driver for chairman of the meeting he would address on behalf of Franklin Roosevelt for president.
“‘It’ll be a lot easier this time,’ Huey went on while we were talking during that Saturday golf game, ‘because you know and I know I make my best speeches when I’m taking [62] the hide off of somebody. I never could make a decent Fourth of July oration in my whole damn life. But give me something to raise hell about and somebody to blame for doing it, like I had when I was campaigning for Mrs. ”

“ Weiss’s life.
How does Sheriff Coleman’s account of what took place compare with these two? There is one marked point of difference. It involves a blow with the fist which no one else describes. Here, then, is that portion of Coleman’s narrative of what took place:
“... At this point a slight young fellow in a white linen suit stepped forward and stretched out his hand with a gun [97] in it and pressed it against Huey’s right side and fired. Everything happened very fast then, because the House had just adjourned, seemingly; anyway, people were coming out. ”

“ Hard-pressed men, driven to almost any lengths by the crying need of their families for such bare necessities as food and shelter, were being forced to promise they would “praise Roosevelt and cuss Long” before being granted a WPA laborer’s pittance.
At the outset of Long’s senatorial career this entire trove of cash and documentary dynamite was kept in some strongboxes of the Mayflower Hotel, where the Senator first established his capitol residence. ”

“ But it was another of the conferees whom Senator Long quoted next, reading from [36] the transcript, as suggesting that “we have Dear to make a trip around the state and then announce that the people want him to run for Governor, and no one will know about this arrangement here ... as you all know we must all keep all of this a secret and not even tell our own families of what is done.” Whereupon, according to the record, another voice proposed that “we should make fellows like Farley and Roosevelt and the suffering corporations ... cough up enough to get rid of that fellow.” ”

“ As nearly as anything human can be certain, it is sure that neither Dr. Weiss nor any of the Pavy clan would ever have dreamed of taking upon their consciences the killing of a fellow being, even in the heat of passion, over such a matter as the loss of a public office, a development they had discussed almost jocularly only a few hours before.
Only two theoretical assumptions thus remain as to the motive of Dr. Weiss in committing a violent act contrary to [163] all that was known of his nature. One is the idea advanced by Yvonne’s uncle, Dr. Pavy, that this was “an act of pure patriotism.” ”

“ It was once stated that before Seymour Weiss, the New Orleans hotel man who was perhaps his closest friend, took him in hand, he dressed like a misprint in a tailored-by-mail [6] catalogue. The description was apt. Early photographs prove it, if proof be needed. Even when he was oil-rich from his expanding law practice in Shreveport, he wore a ring in which a huge diamond gleamed, and a tie-pin in which another, equally large, was set.
“Stop talkin’ po’-mouth to me, son,” an elderly legislator at Baton Rouge once advised him. “You got di’monds all over you. ”

“ The views on all sides are charming. In the rear is the city, with its roofs and spires; Black Rock and Stratford lights are in plain sight; to the eastward and southward stretches “Old Long Island’s sea-girt shore”; and between lies the broad expanse of the salt water, with its ever “fresh” breezes, and the perpetual panorama of sails and steamers. I do not believe that a million dollars to-day would compensate the city of Bridgeport for the loss of what is confessed to be the most delightful public pleasure-ground between New York and Boston. ”

“ And Huey, as he surveyed the result of this promise in the mirror, was more than satisfied.
* * * * *
Near an old slab cottage adjacent to the Pitt Town Common, Farmer Wigway was drawing rails. His movements were deliberate—deliberate as though he had an assurance that eternity was p. 126before him, and he had to put in time. He was well seconded in this endeavour by his team of bullocks, who stopped to ruminate on the vanities of life or some cognate reflection at every step. ”

“ Huey said, "but damn poor homesteaders. Beats the devil the kind of people that are taking up land. Can't develop a country with landowners like that. Those girls want to go home. Already. I said you wanted 'em to come over to dinner tomorrow noon. Maybe you can fix up something kinda special."
[21] "I'll drop a few extra spuds into the pot and bake a pan of cornbread—they'll eat it," Mrs. Dunn predicted cheerfully. She was right.
Bringing us back to the claim the next afternoon Huey suddenly remembered that he had promised a neighbor to help string barb-wire the following day. ”

“ Situated on Long Island Sound, with that vast water-view in front, and on every other side a beautiful and fertile country with every variety of inland scenery, and charming drives which led through valleys rich with well-cultivated farms, and over hills thick-wooded with far-stretching forests of primeval growth,—all these natural attractions appeared to me only so many aids to the advancement the beautiful and busy city might attain, if public-spirit, enterprise, and money grasped and improved the opportunities the locality itself extended. ”

“ To the public-spirited gentlemen who have so generously donated to the city the land for the Sea-side Park, Bridgeport owes a debt of gratitude which she can never repay. Their names will descend to posterity, and be remembered with pride and exultation as among the noblest of public benefactors, so long as the flowers bloom and the waves wash the margin of the Sea-side Park. No citizen of Bridgeport, identified with her growth and prosperity, and having the future welfare of the city at heart, should fail to contribute, in such a manner as best he may, to such a grand improvement. ”