Sidney Jackson McCrory (July 27, 1911 – February 27, 1985)[1] was the Louisiana Commissioner of Agriculture and Forestry from 1956 to 1960 during the final term of his political ally, Governor Earl Long.
He was also a key organizer in 1960 for the John F. Kennedy/Lyndon B. Johnson ticket, which handily carried Louisiana's then ten electoral votes.
[2] McCrory was one of six children born in the village of Hope Villa on Bayou Manchac in Ascension Parish near Baton Rouge to the former Estelle Buffington Buillon and Cecil C. McCrory (1880-1944), a cotton farmer and a graduate of Louisiana State University with degrees in both mechanical and electrical engineering.
Cecil McCrory served as adjutant general of the Louisiana National Guard, which he worked to reorganize during the administration of Governor Ruffin G. Pleasant from 1916 to 1920.
[3] Sidney McCrory, whose middle name "Jackson" comes from his paternal grandfather, finished LSU with a degree in entomology.
[4] One of McCrory's sisters, Cherrie Claire, married J. L. Iles, who during World War II was stationed in the Solomon Islands, where he was for a time a roommate of John F. Kennedy.
Their friendship continued after the war when both attended for several years the annual reunion of their military group in New York City.
[2] Sidney McCrory unseated the one-term commissioner, Dave L. Pearce of West Carroll Parish in northeastern Louisiana, in the primary election held on January 17, 1956.
Pearce, a former member of both houses of the Louisiana Legislature, first ran for agriculture commissioner in 1948 on the intraparty ticket of former Governor Sam Houston Jones of Lake Charles.