William M. Rainach - Adoption and Early Years

Adoption and Early Years

Rainach was born as William Odom in Kentwood, a rural town in Tangipahoa Parish, east of Baton Rouge. His mother died in the influenza epidemic of 1917, when Rainach was four. His father placed Rainach and three other sons in the Baptist orphanage in Lake Charles. He and a foster sister, Leona Aron Rainach, were then adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Albert M. Rainach of Summerfield.

He was such an excellent primary student that he completed grades one through four in two years. He graduated from Summerfield High School and attended Southern Arkansas University (then Southern State College) in Magnolia, Arkansas, the seat of Columbia County from 1932 to 1933. He attended Strayer's Business College in Washington, D.C., from 1935 to 1936, when he also worked for the United States government. Thereafter, he attended Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, but there is no record in A Dictionary of Louisiana Biography as to whether he graduated.

Rainach wanted to be a baseball player, but in 1924, he was struck by a bat and later lost his sight in one eye because of the injury. Coincidentally, one of his 1959 political rivals, Bill Dodd, did achieve his own goal of playing professional baseball for a time.

In 1939, Rainach organized the Claiborne Electric Cooperative, Inc., based in Homer, which brought the first electricity to farms in northwest Louisiana. He founded Claiborne Butane in Homer in 1945 and was the company president from 1948 to 1977. In 1967, he became the president of the Arcadia Butane Co., Inc., in Arcadia, the seat of Bienville Parish. The Rainachs lived on a 450-acre (1.8 km2) farm near Summerfield.