An older brother, Verna Elisha Howard, was a radio minister for more than four decades who in Texarkana, Texas, founded the International Gospel Hour.
[6] Howard was the driving force for a new City Hall and the expansion of the Louisiana Purchase Gardens and Zoo into a major statewide attraction.
Attendance at the games by those from rural areas and small towns served too as an economic boost to Monroe-area merchants and promoted regional unity.
[10] Howard became an informal advisor to his sister mayor, Bert Hatten of West Monroe, a newspaper managing editor and publisher.
[9] He was succeeded by the interim mayor, William Derwood Cann Jr., a businessman and a highly decorated lieutenant colonel in World War II.
Howard was among the Democratic defectors, which also included Lieutenant Governor C. C. "Taddy" Aycock and Louisiana Secretary of State Wade O. Martin Jr., who attended a Goldwater rally at Tulane University Stadium in New Orleans.
There Goldwater appeared with his senatorial ally, Democrat-turned-Republican Senator Strom Thurmond, who had won Louisiana's then ten electoral votes in 1948.
[16] In mid-December 1966, Howard sought the chairmanship of the Louisiana Democratic Party after the resignation of C. H. "Sammy" Downs, a former state legislator from Alexandria and an aide to Governor John McKeithen.
Ultimately, Downs, Howard, and Perez all supported the challenge waged in 1968 by George C. Wallace, the former governor of Alabama, who ran as the American Independent Party nominee.
Mayo, a native of Mer Rouge in Morehouse Parish, who was victorious in a special election in 2001 and won the first of thus far three consecutive full terms in 2004.