Vance Plauche
Encyclopedia
Vance Gabriel Plauche was a Lake Charles
Lake Charles, Louisiana
Lake Charles is the fifth-largest incorporated city in the U.S. state of Louisiana, located on Lake Charles, Prien Lake, and the Calcasieu River. Located in Calcasieu Parish, a major cultural, industrial, and educational center in the southwest region of the state, and one of the most important in...

 attorney
Lawyer
A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...

 and civic leader who represented the Seventh Congressional District of Louisiana
Louisiana
Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...

 in the United States House of Representatives
United States House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the United States Congress, the bicameral legislature which also includes the Senate.The composition and powers of the House are established in Article One of the Constitution...

 as a Democrat
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...

 for a single term from 1941 to 1943.

Plauche was born in Plaucheville
Plaucheville, Louisiana
Plaucheville is a village in Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana, United States. The population was 281 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Plaucheville is located at ....

 in Avoyelles Parish to Etienne Arthur Plauche and the former Maria A. Gremillion, who were wed on December 1, 1890. He was educated in public and private schools in Marksville
Marksville, Louisiana
Marksville is a city in and the parish seat of Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana, United States. The population was 5,537 at the 2000 census. Louisiana's first land-based casino, Paragon Casino Resort, opened in Marksville in June 1994...

, the Avoyelles Parish seat of government.

In 1914, Plauche graduated from St. Francis Xavier's College in New Orleans (not to be confused with the predominantly African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

 Xavier University of Louisiana
Xavier University of Louisiana
Xavier University of Louisiana , located in New Orleans, Louisiana, in the United States, is a private, coeducational, liberal arts college with the distinction of being the only historically black Roman Catholic institution of higher education...

). In 1918, he obtained his LL.B. degree from Loyola University, also in New Orleans, and was the president of his senior class.

Plauche was a law clerk in the office of the Louisiana attorney general
Attorney General
In most common law jurisdictions, the attorney general, or attorney-general, is the main legal advisor to the government, and in some jurisdictions he or she may also have executive responsibility for law enforcement or responsibility for public prosecutions.The term is used to refer to any person...

 from 1916-1918. During the same period, he was the secretary of the Louisiana Board of Pardons. Near the end of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

, Plauche was a private in Base Hospital 102 in Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 from 1918-1919.

Plauche was admitted to the bar in 1918 and practiced law in the Lake Charles firm of Plauche and Plauche from 1920 to 1927. He then joined Oliver Stockwell in the partnership Plauche and Stockwell from 1934 to 1975. The firm became Stockwell, Sievert, Viccellio, Clements & Shaddock.

Plauche was a director of Calcasieu Savings and Loan Association
Savings and loan association
A savings and loan association , also known as a thrift, is a financial institution that specializes in accepting savings deposits and making mortgage and other loans...

 and Plauche Engineering
Engineering
Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of...

, Inc. He was the Lake Charles city attorney from 1928–1932 and the district counsel to the Home Owners' Loan Corporation
Home Owners' Loan Corporation
The Home Owners' Loan Corporation was a New Deal agency established in 1933 by the Home Owners' Loan Corporation Act under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Its purpose was to refinance home mortgages currently in default to prevent foreclosure. This was accomplished by selling bonds to lenders in...

 from 1933-1935.

In 1940, he was a campaign for the successful gubernatorial candidate, Sam Houston Jones of Lake Charles. Plauche served as secretary of the Louisiana Civil Service
Civil service
The term civil service has two distinct meanings:* A branch of governmental service in which individuals are employed on the basis of professional merit as proven by competitive examinations....

 Commission and was a delegate to the Democratic State Convention in Baton Rouge. That same year he was unopposed for a vacant seat in Congress when the Democratic incumbent
Incumbent
The incumbent, in politics, is the existing holder of a political office. This term is usually used in reference to elections, in which races can often be defined as being between an incumbent and non-incumbent. For example, in the 2004 United States presidential election, George W...

 René L. De Rouen decided to retire. Plauche served only a single term and did not seek reelection in 1942.

Plauche was a member of the American and Louisiana bar associations and a trustee of the Lake Charles Public Library
Library
In a traditional sense, a library is a large collection of books, and can refer to the place in which the collection is housed. Today, the term can refer to any collection, including digital sources, resources, and services...

. He was also a member of the American Legion
American Legion
The American Legion is a mutual-aid organization of veterans of the United States armed forces chartered by the United States Congress. It was founded to benefit those veterans who served during a wartime period as defined by Congress...

 and the Veterans of Foreign Wars
Veterans of Foreign Wars
The Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States is a congressionally chartered war veterans organization in the United States. Headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri, VFW currently has 1.5 million members belonging to 7,644 posts, and is the largest American organization of combat...

. He was active in the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana, the Kiwanis Club, the Order of the Elks, and the Lake Charles Golf
Golf
Golf is a precision club and ball sport, in which competing players use many types of clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a golf course using the fewest number of strokes....

 and Country Club
Country club
A country club is a private club, often with a closed membership, that typically offers a variety of recreational sports facilities and is located in city outskirts or rural areas. Activities may include, for example, any of golf, tennis, swimming or polo...

.

Plauche was a member of the Immaculate Conception Roman Catholic Church in Lake Charles. In 1949, he was named a "Knight of St. Gregory" by Pope Pius XII. He was a member of the Knights of Columbus
Knights of Columbus
The Knights of Columbus is the world's largest Catholic fraternal service organization. Founded in the United States in 1882, it is named in honor of Christopher Columbus....

 men's organization and the "grand knight" of the Calcasieu Council No. 1207. He enjoyed the study of ancient and modern history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...

.

On September 24, 1923, Plauche married the former Marie Amire Bush of New Orleans. They had a son, Vance William Plauche (born 1924) of Lake Charles, who ran for Congress in 1968 as a Republican
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...

 against the popular Democrat Edwin Washington Edwards. Edwards (born 1927) defeated Plauche, 84.9 to 15.1 percent, in the same Seventh District that Plauche's father had represented twenty-eight years earlier.

Plauche is interred in Consolata Cemetery in Lake Charles.
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