Frank Voelker Jr.

Voelker was the second of five children of the former Isabel Ransdell and attorney Frank Voelker Sr., both of Lake Providence. His father was elected in 1936 as a Louisiana 6th Judicial District judge; he was repeatedly re-elected and served in this position until his death in 1963.[2] Isabel was the daughter of District Judge Francis Xavier Ransdell, who preceded Frank Voelker Sr. on the 6th district court.[2] In this period the majority-black population of this parish (and all in the state) was largely excluded as voters by discriminatory administration of voter registration barriers; Voelker was essentially elected only by the white population.

Voelker Jr. graduated from the Roman Catholic St. Patrick Parochial School in Lake Providence. He attended Louisiana Tech University in Ruston, where he received his Bachelor of Arts. In 1943, he graduated from Tulane University Law School in New Orleans.[2]

From 1943 to 1946, he was a first lieutenant and a pilot in the United States Marine Corps during World War II. Among his assignments, he trained pilots at the Pensacola Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida.

After military service, he engaged in 1946 and 1947 in further study of corporations and taxes at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.[3]

After his year at Harvard, Voelker launched his law practice in Lake Providence; his partners included W. B. Ragland Jr., Charles Brackin, and James Carpenter Crigler Sr. In 1950, he was appointed city attorney,[3] a position that he filled until the early 1960s.

As the civil rights movement increased its activism in the South, the state legislature authorized creation of the Louisiana State Sovereignty Commission, which operated from 1960 to 1967, modeled on a similar agency established in Mississippi. It "espoused states' rights, communist, and segregationist ideas, with a particular focus on maintaining the status quo in race relations. It was closely allied with the Louisiana Joint Legislative Committee on Un-American Activities."[4]

Governor Jimmie Davis appointed Voelker in 1962 as chairman of the commission.[5] Although not part of law enforcement, the commission had unusual investigative and police powers and investigated state citizens suspected of being civil rights activists or communist infiltrators. It sometimes used economic pressures to suppress activists.

Critics of the commission claimed that it was created to defend racial segregation. W. Spencer Myrick, a former state representative from Oak Grove in West Carroll Parish, worked as an investigator for the commission.[6]

When Voelker left the commission in 1963, so did Myrick. In 1963, Myrick was elected to the Louisiana State Senate.[7]

After his unsuccessful 1963 gubernatorial race (see below), Voelker relocated with his family to New Orleans to become a partner in the law firm McGlinchey Stafford. Active in his state and national bar associations, Voelker in 1995 was named Distinguished Attorney by the Louisiana Bar Foundation. He was a fellow of the American Bar Foundation.[3]

In 1963, Voelker resigned from the Sovereignty Commission to run for governor in the Democratic primary election. Governor Davis was ineligible to seek a third nonconsecutive term. In his campaign, Voelker urged the establishment of a cost-of-living formula for state employees and public welfare recipients.[8] A few weeks after Voelker entered the race, his father died of a heart attack.[9]

Voelker ran considerable advertising, including television spots, in his gubernatorial race.[10] He did not reach the top tier of candidates and withdrew from the race to become chairman of the campaign of Robert F. Kennon, who had previously served as governor.[11] When Kennon finished in fourth place in the primary held on December 7, 1963 (fifteen days after the assassination of John F. Kennedy), Voelker supported deLesseps Story Morrison, the former mayor of New Orleans. Morrison had led the primary balloting but lost the runoff election to John McKeithen.[5] McKeithen handily defeated the Republican Charlton Lyons in the general election held on March 3, 1964.[12] At the time, most African Americans in Louisiana were still disenfranchised, and most conservative whites supported the Democratic Party; it was effectively a one-party state.

In 1947, Voelker married the former Virginia Wilson (1921–2011), a native of Weston in Lewis County in northern West Virginia. They were married by a priest in Chatham, New Jersey. Virginia Voelker graduated from the College of Notre Dame of Maryland in Baltimore, Maryland, and attended acting school in New York City. After they moved to Louisiana, she established the Good Shepherd Early Childhood Development Center, an early elementary Montessori school in Lake Providence.[13]

The couple had six children. David Ransdell Voelker, became a New Orleans entrepreneur and community leader.[14] The eldest, Mullady Voelker, married James Carpenter Crigler Jr., an attorney who was reared in St. Joseph in Tensas Parish. Crigler's father, J. C. Crigler Sr. (1919–2016), farmed the Sunnyside Plantation in St. Joseph and was a law partner of Frank Voelker Jr.[15]

The other Voelker children are Frank Voelker, III, a physician from Franklinton in Washington Parish who specializes in cardiovascular disease,[16] and Mary V. Clauss (married name), Kitty V. Mattesky (married name), and George W. Voelker, all of New Orleans.[13][17]

Voelker's last surviving sibling, Flournoy "Flo" Voelker Guenard (1924–2016), was born in Texarkana, Arkansas, worked in the Northeast Louisiana Savings and Loan Association, a company founded in Lake Providence by Isabell Ransdell Voelker, the mother of the Voelker children.[18] Voelker's nephew, Stephen Voelker Guenard (1948–2018), was a pilot in the United States Air Force and was later employed by Delta Air Lines. A co-founder of the Heber Valley Aero Museum in Heber City, Utah, he was committed to the historical preservation of aircraft used in World War II.[19]

Voelker was affiliated with the veterans organizations, the American Legion and the Forty and Eight, the Farm Bureau Federation, Rotary International, and the executive board of the Ouachita Council for the Boy Scouts of America. He was a member of the board of governors of the Council of State Governments. The Voelkers were members of St. Patrick's Catholic Church in Lake Providence prior to their move to New Orleans.[2] Mrs. Voelker was a board member of the Arts Council of New Orleans and the Harper and the Mitchiner-Gittinger family foundations there.[13]

Voelker died in New Orleans two weeks before his 81st birthday. He and his wife are interred at Lake Providence Cemetery.[1]

• The Frank Voelker Jr Scholarship at Tulane Law School was set up by his family; it is awarded periodically to a student from North Louisiana who has demonstrated academic excellence and a commitment to the study of civil law.[20]

Voelker is mentioned in the book, All Aboard: Lucky in War, Lucky in Peace, Lucky in Love (2003) by James Gobold, a war buddy.[21]