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:''For the Republican former U.S. representative and lieutenant governor of North Carolina, see James Carson Gardner.'' James Creswell Gardner, I, known as Jim Gardner (July 17, 1924 – August 27, 2010),〔James C. Gardner obituary, ''Shreveport Times'', August 29, 2010〕 was a power company executive best known as the mayor of Shreveport, Louisiana, who served a single term from 1954 to 1958. Sometimes called Shreveport's "First Citizen," Jim Gardner was twenty-nine when elected mayor and thirty when he assumed the office. His progressive and independent politics in a decade of general conservatism may have impacted his defeat for a second term in 1958 by fellow Democrat Clyde Edward Fant, Sr. In 1959, Gardner joined the administration of Southwestern Electric Power Company, which serves parts of Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas. He retired as company vice president in 1987. He penned a two-volume personal and political autobiography of his life in Shreveport, entitled ''Jim Gardner and Shreveport'' (Ritz Publications of Shreveport). Vol. I covers 1924 to1958; Vol. II, 1959 to 2006.〔 ==Early years and family heritage== Gardner was born in Shreveport to Arvill Pitt "Jack" Gardner and the former Marie Creswell. His maternal grandfather, James Pleasants Creswell, owned the former Creswell Hotel in Shreveport. James Creswell's wife died when daughter Marie was an adolescent, and he did not remarry. Instead, father and daughter worked together in the management of the hotel. Arvill Gardner, born in 1892 in Carroll County, Tennessee, moved to Shreveport in 1914. After his marriage to Marie, the couple operated the former Gardner Hotel in the 400 block of Milam Street in downtown Shreveport.〔 Jack Gardner subsequently died in a house fire. James Gardner's maternal great-grandmother, Julia Pleasants Creswell, the mother of James Pleasants Creswell, wrote several books about life in the American Civil War era, one called ''Callamura'', an autobiographical novel first published when she and her husband, Judge David Creswell (Gardner's great-grandfather), lived in Greenwood, a Caddo Parish community west of Shreveport. ''Callamura'' was republished by Ritz Publications in 2003, after a copy was found dormant in a library in Indiana. Gardner is a descendant of Thomas Bibb, the second governor of Alabama, and Pierce Mason Butler, the governor of South Carolina from 1836–1838, who was killed in the Mexican-American War.〔 Julia Pleasants and David Creswell were married in 1854 at Bibb's Corinthian column house at Belle Mina in Madison County near Huntsville, Alabama. In 1944, at the age of twenty, Gardner married childhood sweetheart Mary Ella Buchanan. They had graduated together in 1940 from C.E. Byrd High School, the first public high school established in Shreveport.〔 Gardner entered basic training in the United States Army and was admitted to Officer Candidate School as a second lieutenant. His Reserve Officers Training Corps unit was sent from Camp Beauregard near Pineville, Louisiana, to Fort Benning, Georgia. With his commission, Gardner was assigned to the European Theater of Operations in World War II. He landed at Cherbourg, France, and then was assigned to Nuremberg, Germany, where he became a keen observer of the Nazi war crime trials. In June 1946 he was discharged at Camp Shelby, Mississippi, and returned to Shreveport, where he spent the remainder of his life.〔 After the war, he obtained a bachelor's degree in history from Louisiana State University. In 1963, at 39, Gardner passed the Louisiana bar exam after taking night classes at Centenary College of Louisiana〔 and four years of self-study, an option no longer available to potential lawyers who must complete law school before taking the qualifying examination. Mary Ella died of cancer on December 28, 1976. James and Mary Ella Gardner had two children: Ellen Buchanan Gardner Caverlee (born 1946), and James Creswell "Cres" Gardner, II (born 1950). In 1978, Gardner married the former Mary Ann Welsh (born 1928).〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「James C. Gardner」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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