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 "Red" Stafford, Jr.; Emily Stafford Brame McNeely (1926-1997); Martha "Patti" Daniel, and George Mason Graham Stafford.^[5] Stafford, Jr. (1928-2017), a Republican,^[6] graduated from Tulane University Law School in New Orleans and was a partner in the Alexandria firm Stafford, Stewart & Potter, formerly Stafford & Pitts. He served on the Louisiana Board of Ethics and the Louisiana Association of Defense Counsel, of which he was the president in 1981.^[7] Emily McNeely was first married to Frank Thebault Brame, Jr. (1919-1992) of Alexandria,^[8] the nephew of Scott Miller Brame (1881-1947),^[9] for whom the Scott M. Brame Middle School in Alexandria is named. Emily's second husband was the Crowley physician, Thomas Ludlow McNeely, Jr., a native of Colfax in Grant Parish, a graduate of the LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans, and a two-term member of the Crowley City Council, who died on his ninetieth birthday on October 26, 2016.^[10] Stafford's namesake grandson, Grove Stafford Brame, the sixth of seven children of Frank and Emily Brame, was a Dr Pepper executive in Dallas and Houston, who died in July 2017 at the age of fifty-nine in Boerne, west of San Antonio, Texas.^[11]

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.^[12]

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

References[]