He was married in 1961, and early in 1962 was called to active military service, being assigned as an air-force surgeon with the rank of captain to duty at Barksdale Field. This base is in Bossier parish, Louisiana, directly across the Red River from Shreveport, the city where Huey Long was married and where Russell Long was born. Thus the son of Carl Weiss was practicing medicine in Louisiana at the time the son of Huey Long won an overwhelming victory there in a campaign for the Senate seat formerly held by his father.
Long’s presidential aspirations left his friend and secretary, Earle Christenberry an embarrassing $28,000 debt to pay.
“It is my firm belief now, and was my belief then,” Christenberry asserts, “that Huey would not have been a candidate for president himself prior to 1940. He told me in 1935 that he intended to stump the country, sounding out sentiment before deciding whom he would support against Roosevelt.
“To that end he had me purchase from Graybar one sound truck which was the last word in mobile loud-speaker installations. It came in a day or two before his death, and I sweated it out for many a month, raising some $28,000 to pay for it. Graybar looked to me for payment because I had placed the order. My recollection is that the money was not forthcoming until late in the Leche campaign, for I would not let them use the truck until it was paid for.”
In retrospect, two predictions about Huey Long hold a certain interest. One, by Elmer Irey, is merely academic, since it deals with what would have happened. In closing his chapter on “The Gentleman from Louisiana” Mr. Irey notes that to him the “important thing about the Huey Long gang’s downfall” is the following:
“I hope this story will destroy for all time one of the blackest libels ever made against the American system of democracy. This libel states that had not Dr. Weiss (or somebody) assassinated Huey Long, our country might well have been taken over by the Kingfish as dictator. The inference is clear. Our country was no match for Huey’s genius and ruthlessness.
“I would suggest that the bullet that killed Huey ... merely saved Huey from going to jail.... Huey had broken the law and was to be indicted for it when he was killed.”
When evaluating this forecast, the first thought that comes to mind is a matter of record: within a month of Long’s death one of his top-echelon supporters was brought to trial on a tax-evasion indictment. Mr. Irey’s organization had selected this particular indictment because it was regarded as the government’s strongest case against any Long administration official. At the trial’s close the jury verdict was “not guilty”!
In the light of past experience the conjecture that Long would in time have gained the presidency is not one casually to be shrugged aside. Had he ever attained “My First Days in the White House,” subjection of the large cities (not the rural areas) would have been his primary objective. Just as New Orleans was the last foothold of the carpetbaggers in the 1870s, Boston, New York, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Chicago, and others might have learned what it is like to live under the rule of force from without.
The other prediction referred to above was made by Mason Spencer in the course of a bitter address on the floor of the House of Representatives in April 1935. Spencer withdrew from public office at the close of this legislative term, as did also Dr. Octave Pavy. Both died of heart attacks within weeks of one another in the summer of 1962. But whereas Spencer forsook politics almost altogether, Dr. Pavy retained a very active quasi-Warwickian interest in parochial campaigns.