Clyde Connell

This month is Women’s History Month, making March the perfect time to celebrate a nationally-renowned artist with Bossier Parish connections, Clyde Dixon Connell. Clyde Connell started as a painter but was best-known as a self-taught abstract impressionist sculptor. In 1998, which was the year of her passing at the age of 97, she was named a Louisiana “Living Legend” by the Louisiana Public Broadcasting Service.

Minnie Clyde Dixon was born in Belcher, Louisiana in 1901 and lived on a large sharecropping plantation. In her adult years she lived in Shreveport and during her later years lived in a cabin in Bossier Parish at Lake Bistineau. Both her Dixon family and the family of Thomas Dixon Connell, Jr., who she married in 1922, had ties to Bossier Parish. Local newspapers mention several visits of the young Connell family to rural south Bossier and the “Poole” community in south Bossier Parish. Thomas was a penal farm warden, and this further opened Clyde’s eyes to racial and social justice issues, as did growing up on the plantation in Belcher as a sensitive, observant child. She was well ahead of her time promoting desegregation and teaching at an integrated Presbyterian church school.

Clyde D. Connell took art classes in Shreveport in the 1920s but it wasn’t until the early 1950s after she raised her children, daughter Clyde and son Brian, that she started painting seriously. In 1952 her art style and interest became firmly established when she traveled to New York City on a social work trip with the Presbyterian Church. She visited the Museum of Modern Art multiple times during her extended stay and was drawn to the color and form of the abstract art. Now her own work is in MOMA’s collection.

Clyde Connell became serious about being a fulltime artist by the early 1960s—when she was about sixty years old-- and set up her first permanent studio. She constructed artistic pieces (such as 3-D wall installations) with wood and metal molded together with a mix of paper and glue. Later that mixture became her medium itself, after adding in some local red dirt and reinforcing it with sticks and embedding small pieces of metal found on her son’s cotton farm. She tended to sculpt tall and narrow figures, with religious overtones and homages to the natural world surrounding her at Lake Bistineau. “The New York Times” reported that her sculptures resembled shamans, decorated trees, or towers. In addition to reflecting her lush natural environment, much of her work also was meant to reflect social issues and culture that she observed around her.

Clyde Connell’s work is represented by the Arthur Roger Gallery in New Orleans, which describes her sculptures as “evocative of ritualistic totems and primitive votive objects; her paintings employ primitive markings and pictographs associated with talismanic shapes.” Locally, the Bossier Arts Council in the old Bossier City Hall building in the East Bank District has some of her sculptures on permanent display.

Come visit us to see the History Center’s small archival collection of Clyde Connell materials. If you have any information, stories, or photos about Clyde Connell or other Bossier Parish artists, we would love to see them or to copy them, with permission, to add to the History Center’s research collection. We are open M-Th 9-8, Fri 9-6, and Sat 9-5. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org

For other fun facts, photos, and videos, be sure to follow us @BPLHistoryCenter on FB, @bplhistorycenter on TikTok, and check out our blog http://bpl-hc.blogspot.com/.

Image: Clyde Dixon Connell from Smithsonian Institution, Archives of American Art 

Article by: Pam Carlisle 

Bossier City Once Home to Real-Life Miss Moneypenny

 The character of Miss Moneypenny, made famous by author Ian Fleming in his James Bond novels and the accompanying movies, is intelligent, inquisitive, privy to confidential information, and indispensable to Bond and his director of British Secret Service boss “M”. Few may know that Bossier City was once home to a real-life Moneypenny whose deeds and accomplishments were no less impressive than those of her fictional counterpart.

Betty Wells Rathmell had a life that brimmed with travel, interesting locales, intrigue, access to people of power and influence, athletic ability and a talent for music, and included a love of family and friends and a strong Christian faith.

Born in 1937 in Washington D.C., Betty was a good student, achieving a level of academic success in high school that led after graduation to a position as a secretary with the Federal Bureau of Investigations, where she soon became known for her shorthand skills. According to her daughter Julie Kaiser, Betty was often asked to attend meetings because she was so quick with taking dictation. This in-demand skill had her in gatherings where FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was among the officials present. “She was on call 24 hours a day,” Julie said. “In places like the middle of a church service, she would be called to work.”

Away from the office, Betty’s athletic abilities took center stage for her employer, as a member of the FBI tennis team. Her prowess on the court helped win tournaments and trophies for the organization.

Betty spent nine years with the bureau before transferring to the Pentagon for a secretarial position in military intelligence with the Defense Intelligence Agency, and it was there that she met U.S. Air Force Tech Sergeant Jim Rathmell. The two would marry in 1964.

Adventures overseas were next for Betty, as she and Jim were stationed in countries such as Italy, Spain, Germany and Africa for the USAF, and the two reveled in these opportunities. They loved to travel and experience new places. Julie recounted a story from her parent’s time in Spain that demonstrated her mother’s fearless nature. The couple met a man on a motorcycle and began a conversation with him. “The next thing my dad knew, mom had hopped on the motorcycle with the man and was riding away,” she said.

After five years abroad, Betty and Jim returned to Washington D.C., and in 1969, she accepted a job offer at the White House during the administration of President Richard Nixon. This was soon followed by a promotion. Julie said her mother once mentioned to a family member how the Watergate break-in, which eventually brought down the administration, and the resulting chaos were alarming and frightening for her. But Julie did say her mom liked Nixon and the first family, even naming her daughter after the President’s daughter Julie Nixon.

One final assignment overseas to the American Embassy in Ankara, Turkey was followed by a move to Bossier City and Barksdale Air Force Base in 1977. Julie said her mother had no trouble transitioning from world traveler and intelligence work to being a mother and homemaker. “She was a wonderful mom,” Julie said.

Betty became active in church, sharing her musical talent with others by directing the children’s music programs and playing piano during worship services at retirement homes in Bossier. She also maintained her competitive edge, taking to the bowling alley instead of the tennis court. And she became a grandmother, spending lots of quality time with her three grandchildren. Betty passed away in 2013 at age 76, but left a legacy that continues to inspire. The fictional Miss Moneypenny may have some catching up to do.

If you have any stories, photos or other information relating to women of Bossier Parish who’ve made history, the History Center may be interested in adding the materials to its research collection by donation or by scanning them and returning the originals. Call or visit us to learn more. We are open M-Th 9-8, Fri 9-6, and Sat 9-5. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org. We can also be found online at https://www.facebook.com/BPLHistoryCenter/

Images: 

• First photo: Betty Wells Rathmell/family photo
• Second photo: Betty standing next to J. Edgar Hoover with her tennis trophy/courtesy Julie Kaiser

Article by: Kevin Flowers

Coy Mae Hines Ward Cooper: Going Where No Bossier Woman Had Gone Before

 Coy Mae Hines Ward Cooper, local businesswoman and trail-blazing civic leader, is this week’s Bossier woman to highlight for this last week of March, Women’s History Month. She was born in Mooringsport, La. on April 3, 1924 and passed away on February 27, 2022 as a resident of the Bloom of Bossier City. In fact, it was the residents of the Bloom, where I present a monthly local history program, who told me about Mrs. Cooper, and that I must look into and present her history. By about the third of dozens of newspaper articles I found about her, and her detailed obituary in the Bossier Press Tribune, I was absolutely convinced they were right.

Coy Mae Hines and her family followed the oil boom, settling in Welch, Louisiana, where she graduated from high school at age 16. She worked at a café in Welch workers (Jefferson Davis Parish) popular with oilfield workers. It was just a matter of a few months before she was running the café. She also met and married a petroleum engineer, John Ward.

After the birth of her second son John, she went to work as a lab assistant at the Arkansas Fuel Oil Company in Bossier City, LA. at the “Grease Plant.” Then the correspondent for the “Bossier City Grease Plant” in “The Planters Press” newspaper wrote, “It’s Private Ward now for Coy Mae Ward, former Grease Plant employee, who recently joined the Women’s Army Corps. She is stationed at Fort Oglethorpe, Ga. for six weeks basic training. So, it’s time to wish another, good luck on these army careers.“ Coy was assigned to the medical unit at the Harmon General Hospital in Longview, TX. She fulfilled a very dire wartime need for medical technicians.

Upon leaving the service, she took a job as a fiscal accountant for the Veterans Administration in Shreveport. She and John Ward divorced and she later married George Cooper, superintendent of the Arkansas Fuel Oil Company, in 1946. They were married for fifty years before his death. Coy and George bought one hundred acres northeast of I-220 and Stockwell Road on what is now Coy Road. They leased another three hundred acres and raised cattle and their sons on the ranch.

George continued to work the ranch. Coy also worked as office manager and accountant for Shreveport Sash and Door Company then became a part-owner. Later, she, Bruce and Donny Logan, and Nancy Barnett formed Builders Millwork. After a few years, they purchased and operated Bossier City’s Bolinger Millwork and Supply Company. She also became partners in the J.R. Wright Construction Company.

Coy became involved in parish politics in 1981 when she was nominated as the first woman to serve on the Bossier Parish Levee Board by Louisiana State Representative, the late Walter Bigby, and appointed by the late Governor Edwin Edwards. Coy learned all she could about the levee system, walking essentially every inch of them. And, owning property on Stockwell Rd area for 22 years at the time, “I can tell you quite a bit about water”, she said to the “Bossier Press Tribune” in August, 1998. That area flooded in 1997 nearly to the point of evacuation.

Coy Cooper also became the first woman on a local labor board, an area economic development board and the first woman on the Red River Waterway Commission. She served as Treasurer and Financial Officer and was first only woman chairman of the Board of Directors of the Greater Bossier Economic Development Foundation. She was elected to the Bossier City Council as Member at Large in 1997, and worked to bring to fruition the following projects: the CenturyLink Center (now Brookshires Grocery Arena); the Louisiana Boardwalk; the Benton Road overpass; the renovation of Old Bossier; the sale of Bossier Medical Center; the Viking Drive extension; and the Arthur Teague Parkway extension.

She drew a standing ovation when she stepped down from the Bossier City Council in 2001 after her last meeting as councilwoman.

Despite all her “firsts” as a woman, Coy made it known in biographical articles that she was “not a woman’s libber.” When she won the ATHENA award for local businesswomen at the age of 70 in 1994, she said about her 45 years in the building supply business, “I’ve lived in a man’s world since I was 25 years old. I feel any woman can make a niche in a man’s world. You’ve got to work hard.” She told the “Shreveport Journal” in October, 1979, “I’ve always been aggressive and outspoken. I felt like if I can’t hold my own in a man‘s world then I shouldn’t be there.”

Despite not claiming the title of Woman’s Libber, there’s no doubt that right here in Bossier, Ms. Cooper put a woman’s face, and sharp mind, in places where they’d not been seen before, and helped to be sure that there were more women to follow in places where important decisions on the future of Bossier were made. I’m sure by now you can see why the friends Mrs. Cooper left behind wanted her legacy to be known.

If you have stories or photographs of some of the area’s civic-minded women, or of Bossier women’s “firsts” we’d love to see or hear them, and perhaps make copies for our collection, with your permission. If you would like to have our “Women Who Made a Difference in Bossier Parish” program, which includes Coy Cooper (in Part 2) or any of our other programs presented to your group, please contact us, as well. We are located at 2206 Beckett St, Bossier City, LA and are open M-Th 9-8, Fri 9-6, and Sat 9-5. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org

For other fun facts, photos, and videos, be sure to follow us @BPLHistoryCenter on FB, @bplhistorycenter on TikTok. 

Image: Photograph of the winner of the Chamber Commercial Beautification Award for the month of October 1980, Wright Cooper Plaza, 707 Benton Road, Bossier City, LA.  (L to R) Coy Cooper, Randy Wright, Carolyn Tauzin-Chamber Representative, Graham Rogers-Chamber President.

Article by: Pam Carlisle

Lydia Fay Walker: From Babies to Seniors, She Served them All

Here’s another extraordinary Bossier Parish woman to celebrate in March, which is Women’s History Month: Mrs. Lydia Fay Walker. Mrs. Walker became Bossier Parish’s last Jeanes Teacher, or Jeanes Supervisor, prior to school desegregation. A Jeanes Supervisor was a multi-faceted position named for the Quaker woman, Anna T. Jeanes, who funded a program to improve the training levels of teachers in Southern U.S. schools for African-American children. The Jeanes Teachers also supervised home demonstration work for African-American women in Bossier Parish, one of the few parishes that added responsibilities such as teaching food preservation, home management skills, public health, and doing home visits and homemakers clubs. They also organized community members to raise money to build more or better schools.  In many ways, Jeanes Supervisors were like a cross between teachers and Peace Corps Volunteers. 

In addition to her Jeanes teacher job, Lydia Fay Walker worked relentlessly throughout her life for the Parish’s citizens. She worked during segregation, especially for African-American students, and after segregation, she worked to improve conditions for every race and age range, from baby to senior citizen. 

Mrs. Walker was a native of Plain Dealing and a resident of Bossier City for 55 years. Her education career spanned that of a classroom teacher, principal and supervisor of elementary and secondary education and also as a parish-wide supervisor of adult education and a supervisor of student teachers from Bishop College in Dallas, her alma mater. She received a master’s from Columbia University and a business education degree from Spaulding Business College in Shreveport. She was married to L.G. Walker Jr., a school bus driver and farming truck driver. It seems they had no children of their own though they did have Lydia Fay’s sister and a young niece living with them on Hamilton Street in Bossier City.  

Through much of the 1960’s, essentially all aspects of life in Bossier Parish were segregated, including philanthropy. Lydia Fay Walker worked with fellow Jeanes supervisor Inez Cenales (at times they split the parish schools among them) and Jack Strong, president of the Bossier Parish Negro Teachers Association, as co-chairs of the 1948 March of Dimes (Polio Fund) for the parish’s “negro schools” in 1948, and was the point person for the Shreveport Times’ “Negro Joy Fund” in Bossier, calling for clothing and furniture and especially monetary donations for food. She was also co-chair of the American Red Cross “negro division” drive.  

However, Mrs. Walker’s fundraising would occasionally cross color lines even before desegregation. In the November 13, 1947, issue of the “Planters Press” of Bossier City, principal Jack L. Strong of Bossier City Colored High School issued an appreciation: “We, the Bossier City Colored Football Team along with our coaching staff, take this method to thank Lydia Fay Walker, supervisor of colored schools in Bossier Parish, for her soliciting from our white friends, funds to help our football team purchase their jerseys and sweaters, which they now have in their possession.” Mrs. Walker also served on the board of the Caddo-Bossier chapter for the Louisiana Association for Mental Health in the 1960’s.  

During her “retirement” in the 1970s and 1980s, Mrs. Walker worked and organized for social causes in a newly-integrating community. She directed the Bossier City Day Care Center, which she had helped found in the 1950’s when she saw a desperate need for it. Without it, she told a Shreveport paper, many children would be left with brothers and sisters who had to drop out of school to care for them, or they might be left alone. The center served as a second home for thousands of local children.  Mrs. Walker stated, “in training and caring for the children, we try to develop the whole child, so when they leave, they will be able to adjust well in public or private schools.” Transportation, breakfast, a hot lunch and snack were served, and playtime and naptime observed.  

Mrs. Walker is also credited with organizing the Bossier Parish Head Start program for preschoolers, was active in the United Way, the Voters League, the Cancer Drive and March of Dimes. She was a member of the Bossier Parish School Board’s advisory committee for school districts 3 and 13. She ran for school board membership in 1978 and lost by only 9 votes in a runoff election against former Bossier city mayor and real estate investor Jake Cameron. She told the Shreveport Times that her priorities were “providing quality education for all people, reducing dropouts and expanding equipment and curricula.” She ran again, unsuccessfully, in 1985.  

For the other end of the lifespan, in 1987 Lydia Fay Walker served as the member-at-large from Bossier City on the Bossier Council on Aging. She succumbed to cancer on October 9, 1989. Her funeral was held in Shreveport at Good Samaritan funeral home, officiated by Bro. Leroy Hudson, pastor of Bennet Street Church of Christ in old downtown Bossier City.  

If you have stories or photographs of some of the area’s civic-minded women, we’d love to see them, and perhaps make copies for our collection, with your permission. If you would like to have our “Women Who Made a Difference in Bossier Parish” program, which includes Lydia Fay Walker (in Part 2) or any of our other programs presented to your group, please contact us, as well. We are located at 2206 Beckett St, Bossier City, LA and are open M-Th 9-8, Fri 9-6, and Sat 9-5. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org 

For other fun facts, photos, and videos, be sure to follow us @BPLHistoryCenter on FB, @bplhistorycenter on TikTok

Image: 

Elect Lydia Fay Walker for Bossier Parish School Board, 1978, Bossier Parish Libraries History Collection

Article by: Pam Carlisle