President of Two Colleges
In 1944, after he lost a statewide race to John E. Coxe for Louisiana superintendent of education, Frazar was named the McNeese College president in Lake Charles, the seat of Calcasieu Parish. Technically, he was the first president of the institution because his three predecessors were known as "deans", not presidents. Under his leadership, many new buildings and programs were established on the campus of what had originally been Lake Charles Junior College, which had opened its doors in 1939.
Frazar left McNeese when he was elected lieutenant governor. He unseated incumbent fellow Democrat C. E. "Cap" Barham of Ruston in the party primary, 327,679 votes (44.9 pecent) to 195,616 (26.8 percent). Frazar won the position without a majority because at the time Louisiana did not require Democratic runoff primaries if there was also no contested primary election for governor at the same time. Because Earl Long had won his nomination outright in the gubernatorial primary, Long's ticket-mate Frazar avoided a second race. Another lieutenant governor candidate was A. Brown Moore, a 1934 Tulane Law School graduate who had fought under General George S. Patton in World War II, was a former member of the New Orleans City Council, and carried the endorsement of the third-place gubernatorial candidate, Fred Preaus of Farmerville in north Louisiana. Frazar then overwhelmed his Republican opponent, Harry R. Hill, in the general election held in the spring of 1956. Hill was the only candidate offered by the Louisiana GOP in the statewide races that year. Months later, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower became the first Republican candidate to win in Louisiana since Reconstruction.
Frazar came to McNeese with three years experience as the president of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, then Southwestern Institute.
Read more about this topic: Lether Frazar
Famous quotes containing the words president of, president and/or colleges:
“What are men celebrating? They are all on a committee of arrangements, and hourly expect a speech from somebody. God is only the president of the day, and Webster is his orator.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... a friend told me that she had read of a woman who had knitted a wash rag for President Wilson. She was eighty years old and her friends thought it remarkable that she could knit a wash rag! I thought that if a woman of eighty could knit a wash rage for a Democratic President it behooved one of ninety-six to make something more than a wash rag for a Republican President.”
—Maria D. Brown (1827–1927)
“But here comes Generosity; giving—not to a decayed artist—but to the arts and sciences themselves.—See,—he builds ... whole schools and colleges for those who come after. Lord! how they will magnify his name!
—One honest tear shed in private over the unfortunate, is worth them all.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)