Odon Bacqué

Odon Lessley Bacqué, Jr., also known as Don Bacqué (born November 30, 1944), is a former No Party member of the Louisiana House of Representatives from District 43 in Lafayette Parish, Louisiana, who served a single term from 1988 to 1992.^[1] In 2014, he released a book of comedy about the foibles of the Vietnam War, in which he served from 1968 to 1970.

Background

Bacqué (pronounced BAH KAY) is one of four sons of Odon L. Bacqué, Sr. (1917-1993), and the former Lydia Aponte (1920-2007), a native of Puerto Rico who attended college in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Bacqué's brothers are Frank R. Bacqué, M.D., William J. Bacqué, and Jean Louis Bacqué (1949-1954). His Roman Catholic parents married in 1943 and moved to Lafayette, where he was born the next year. His mother, who held a degree in Chemistry, was a lab instructor from 1965 to 1986 at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, then known as the University of Southwestern Louisiana. Bacque's parents and brother are interred at Lafayette Memorial Park.^[2]

From 1959 to 1961, Bacqué, attended Charlotte Catholic High School in Charlotte, North Carolina. He returned to Lafayette for his senior year to Cathedral Carmel High School, from which he graduated in 1962.^[3] In 1966, he obtained a bachelor's degree in History from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge and planned to enter law school but instead faced conscription by the United States Army. He entered officer candidate school and served in the former South Vietnam with the 5th Special Forces, popularly known as the Green Berets. After his two years in the military, Bacqué returned to Lafayette, launched a life insurance business, was later named to the Million Dollar Round Table, and became involved in various civic affairs.^[4]

In 1982, as the president (now called chairman) of the Greater Lafayette Chamber of Commerce, Bacqué supported the consolidation of the Lafayette city and parish governments.^[5] In 1983, Bacqué received the Distinguished Service Award given annually by the Lafayette Junior Chamber International. He organized a Vietnam Veterans group in Lafayette. He has served as the state co-chairman of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Committee that built a monument in New Orleans to honor the 881 veterans from Louisiana who did not return from the war.^[4]

Bacqué is a past and current president of the Lafayette Estate and Business Planning Council. He is a past state president of the Louisiana Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors, an organization of which he has been a member since 1970, when he entered the insurance business.^[4]

Civic and political highlights

In 1986, Bacqué was the founding chairman of Leadership Lafayette, a program sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce to train community leaders.^[5]

In 1987, Bacqué unseated the Republican Michael F. Thompson. In the nonpartisan blanket primary held on October 24, Thompson led a three-candidate field with 7,345 votes (45 percent) to Bacqué's 6,473 (40 percent). The remaining but critical 2,377 votes were polled by the Democrat, Vance Lanier.^[6] In the November 21 general election, the Lanier backers swung strongly to Bacqué, who prevailed, 6,811 (57 percent) to Thompson's 5,106 ballots (43 percent). Thompson's defeat was also attributed to the failure of some 2,200 Republican voters who participated in the primary to return to the polls for the second round of balloting. The successful Republican candidate for lieutenant governor, Paul Hardy, won in Lafayette Parish over the Democratic incumbent Robert "Bobby" Freeman at the same time that Thompson was going down to defeat.^[7]

As a freshman legislator, Bacqué stood alone in 1989, when he attempted to deny seating to newly elected representative David Duke, a former figure in the Ku Klux Klan, on the grounds that Duke was not a legal resident of his district. When Duke's election opponent, fellow Republican John S. Treen, failed in a court challenge, Duke was seated but without Bacqué's acquiescence.^[8]

In 2007, Lafayette City and Parish President Joey Durel named Bacqué to fill the unexpired term of Don Higginbotham on the Lafayette Regional Airport Commission. Higginbotham, a Democrat-turned-Republican, had earlier served with Bacqué in the state House.^[5]

In 2010 Bacqué served for five months on the Lafayette Charter Commission.^[9]

In 2014, Bacqué was a political donor to Democratic U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu, who failed in her bid for a fourth term in the runoff election held on December 6. He has also contributed to his own Lafayette-area congressman, Republican Charles Boustany of Louisiana's 3rd congressional district.^[10]

Non-fiction writer

In 2014, Bacqué published the e-book A Walk in the Park: A Vietnam Comedy, which examines comic situations he encountered in the military but without the cynicism of such well-known novels as Catch 22 or MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors. Bacqué told the reporter Bill Decker of the Lafayette Daily Advertiser that his "experience wasn't heroic. It was comedic. ... Those things that we did to occupy that time is what most young people do when they’re in a crazy situation."^[11]

Bacqué had mistakenly believed that his poor eyesight would spare him from combat. Forty years after his military service ended, Bacqué found that his memories were fading until, when he was moving to another house, he comes across some wartime letters that he had written to his wife, the former Carola Lipsey (born November 12, 1946), known as "Cookie" Bacqué, by whom he has two daughters, Leslie and Emily. The letters quickly rekindled his Vietnam experience and enabled him to write his book.^[11]

References