Each week, the Shreveport-Bossier Journal’s Tony Taglavore takes to lunch a local person – someone who is well-known, successful, and/or influential, and asks, “What’s Your Story?”
By TONY TAGLAVORE, Journal Services
There was the high school sophomore, weighing some 250 pounds and wearing a size 15 shoe, standing on the steps of the United States Capitol. As part of the Close Up program, he and other Shreveport students were in Washington, D.C., as the Close Up website reads, to “find their unique voice and help them develop the skills and awareness they need to be engaged citizens for life.”
His group was getting “close up” with then Louisiana first-year Congressman Buddy Roemer.
“You are on record as opposing the designation of Dr. (Martin Luther) King’s birthday as a national holiday,” the young man boldly reminded the congressman. “Why is that, and are you open to changing your mind?”
Congressman Roemer’s answer wasn’t particularly satisfying for the student who grew up in the often-times neglected area known as the Cooper Road. Respectfully, the two went back and forth.
“Dr. Bratton (a teacher at Caddo Magnet High School) walks up and says, ‘You just gave a Harvard-educated congressman a pretty good run for his money with those questions. What do you intend to do with yourself?”
“I’m going to college, I’m going to play for the Dallas Cowboys, I’m going to win a fist-full of Super Bowl rings, and I’m going to come back and become a U.S. Senator.”
Then, Dr. Bratton said something that would change the course of the young man’s life.
“Well, the kid you’re going to have to beat for that position is in my classroom at Caddo Magnet. You need to come see what he’s up to.”
Hmmm . . . .
“That planted a seed.”
A seed that began to grow after the high schooler transferred from Green Oaks. Caddo Magnet didn’t have football, but it did have a newly formed debate team.
“While I missed football, I was really challenged by the environment at Caddo Magnet. It became probably one of the single best things that happened to me. I probably learned as much in those two years than I did in all the years prior, and for that matter, all the years after.”
Cedric Glover, former Shreveport City Councilman, Louisiana State Representative, Shreveport Mayor, and recently named Executive Director of Shreveport’s Downtown Development Authority (DDA), told me that story, and his story, during lunch at a place he chose, Fertitta’s Delicatessen. Cedric had the Miami Muffaletta which came with double meat and cheese, a bag of Cheddar and Sour Cream Ruffles, and a Coke Zero. I had a Meatball Muffaletta, Jalapeno chips, and bottled water.
Still suffering from a bilateral quadricep tendon rupture he suffered in 2012, Cedric’s stride looked painful. He brought his own chair with arms, which helps him sit down and get up.
“I’ve run 10 times, and I’ve won 9,” Cedric said matter-of-factly about his success in politics. “What led to my political service was my willingness to see the needs and challenges of my community and offer whatever talents and gifts and abilities I possessed, in an effort to try and address those issues and challenges.”
That willingness was likely born from learning about the efforts of his parents. Despite Cedric’s father having been in the Air Force and qualifying for a VA loan, he was restricted by law and custom to buying a home in the Cooper Road part of town. It was an area which lacked infrastructure and what we would now consider necessities.
“My parents and their friends were part of a community of individuals who were seeking to advance and elevate the neighborhood and community. There weren’t paved streets. There wasn’t access to a sewer system. There wasn’t access to a water system. There wasn’t fire protection. In order to be able to achieve those sorts of things, it was incumbent upon them to organize and facilitate those things.”
In late 1987, after studying at LSU, Southern University at Shreveport, LSUS, and Grambling – but not graduating – Cedric decided “it was time to step out into the real world.” That meant moving to Dallas – “what I thought would be my future.” But Cedric’s mom needed a third back surgery. With Cedric’s four siblings either married with families or entrenched in their profession, he was called back to the Cooper Road.
“It became my duty, which I embraced, to come home and see my mother through her convalescence, .”
But what Cedric remembered as an “Idyllic” area growing up, was being infiltrated by California gangs and crack cocaine.
“I’m seeing what had once been a rather safe environment now greatly disrupted by these two forces. I did not like it. I was not happy with it. In keeping with the tradition of those people who had raised me, my parents and the surrounding community, I became active and engaged and involved.
That meant working for the Boy Scouts of America, providing constructive programs for young men in an academic environment. That meant becoming president of the Martin Luther King Community Center and Neighborhood Association. That meant becoming program director for The Lighthouse, an after school and summer enrichment program for at-risk youth. And there were other roles, some of which worked hand-in-hand with law enforcement. Changes took place. Cedric’s efforts were working.
“In early 1990, people within the neighborhood began to suggest that if I had been able to achieve these sort of successes and make this kind of stance and you’re not elected, then you could probably end up achieving and impacting more if you were to run (for office).”
Cedric did, and served two-terms as city councilman (first elected at age 24). He was in the third year of his third term as state representative when voted into office as Shreveport’s first African American mayor, and became one of just three two-term mayors under the city’s current charter which went into effect in 1978.
“It was meaningful from the perspective of wanting to ensure that I left (Shreveport) better than I found it. I also wanted to make it possible for those who came behind me to be able to achieve the same objective, and not be burdened by the same things I was in terms of people doubting whether or not someone who looks like me or comes from where I’m from, not only having the ability to do the job, but do it well.”
At 59-years-old, Cedric says his new position leading the DDA, “boils down to another opportunity to serve Shreveport.”
“We are a decade from Shreveport’s bicentennial (2035) . . . . We’ve got a decade to answer ‘What is it we’re going to say to the future that these 200 years of Shreveport represents?’ . . . . I want to be able to say something that is positive, forward moving, and builds upon the time we’ve been here, and give those who will come behind us more to do and have going into the future.”
Cedric had already spent more than an hour-and-a-half with me, so I thought it best to ask my final question. As always, what is it about his story that might have an impact on someone?
“Believe in the possible. Whatever your situation and circumstances are, wherever you believe yourself to be, wherever you perceive yourself to have been born, whatever you believe your challenges to have been, those things that you aspire to, those things that you hope for, those things you dream of, those things you believe in, they are possible. But they don’t just come with wishing. They don’t just come with hoping. They come with time. They come with effort. They come with commitment. They come with determination. They come with the resolve that when you get knocked down, the important thing is to gather yourself, get back up, keep trying, and never give up.”
Do you know someone with a story? Email SBJTonyT@gmail.com.
The Journal’s weekly “What’s Your Story?” series is sponsored by Morris & Dewett Injury Lawyers.