Rainach's Suicide and Legacy
In 1959, Rainach received the "Americanism Award" from the Caddo-Bossier chapter of the newly formed Young Americans for Freedom. He was a member of the Louisiana Farm Bureau, the Louisiana Forestry Association, the Louisiana Independent Royalty Owners and Oil Producers Association, and the American Defense Preparedness Association. In 1974, he was named "Man of the Year" by the Homer Lions Club.
Rainach, who had been in ill health, shot himself in the right temple with a .38 caliber pistol on a Thursday morning, January 26, 1978, in his backyard. His body was found by the maid. His wife, Mable Justin Fincher Rainach (May 26, 1915 – January 15, 1995), was shopping in Homer at the time. The coroner ruled the death a suicide. His suicide may have been personal in regard to his declining health. He never sought office again after his failed gubernatorial bid.
Rainach's life story and death is remarkably similar to that of a former segregationist leader in Arkansas, James D. Johnson, the 1966 Democratic gubernatorial nominee, who lost the general election to Winthrop Rockefeller, the Rockefeller family having been a bane of Rainach as well.
Services for Rainach were held on January 27, 1978, at the Trinity Southern Methodist Church, a conservative body in Claiborne Parish that had broken with the United Methodists.
In addition to his wife, Rainach was survived by two sons, William Monroe "Bill" Rainach, Jr. (born 1940), of Summerfield and later Bossier City and Rex Dean Rainach, Sr., (born 1946) of Baton Rouge, and a daughter, Mary Elizabeth Rainach Wilson (September 11, 1944 - November 3, 1982).
After Rainach's death, his wife Mable donated $500 to the unsuccessful 1980 campaign waged by Woody Jenkins in his challenge to U.S. Senator Russell B. Long.
William and Mable Rainach and daughter Mary Elizabeth are interred at Arlington Cemetery off Louisiana Highway 146 in Homer.
Read more about this topic: William M. Rainach
Famous quotes containing the words suicide and/or legacy:
“However great a man’s fear of life, suicide remains the courageous act, the clear-headed act of a mathematician. The suicide has judged by the laws of chance—so many odds against one that to live will be more miserable than to die. His sense of mathematics is greater than his sense of survival. But think how a sense of survival must clamour to be heard at the last moment, what excuses it must present of a totally unscientific nature.”
—Graham Greene (1904–1991)
“What is popularly called fame is nothing but an empty name and a legacy from paganism.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)