1946 Native of Union Parish Louisiana Runs for Governor of Texas Submitted by: Shawn Martin Date of Submission: 12/2008 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ************************************************ ================================================================================== ================================================================================== 1946 Native of Union Parish Louisiana Runs for Governor of Texas From Dallas, Texas "Morning News", issue of 9 June 1946 ================================================================================== ================================================================================== ["This is the second of several personality sketches on candidates for Governor that will appear in The News before the July primary."] Sellers: Teacher, Jurist, Cattleman If all the Jersey cows in Texas were given a vote, Gen. Grover Sellers probably would be elected Governor by a landslide. Sellers is a tried and true friend of the Jersey. On the wall of his farm home near Sulphur Springs is a photograph of Susan’s Golden Volunteer, an efficient bull. The bull’s picture is given equal display with photos of the candidate’s numerous close friends and governmental officials. Under Volunteer’s picture is this caption: “Removed Mortgage from the Farm.” Sellers, while making friends with the Jersey, hasn’t done badly with human relations in politics. He has made six political races and has won them all. He is a self-taught lawyer, having studied at night while serving as a Justice of the Peace. HAS RURAL BACKGROUND. The Attorney General is a friendly sort, seldom makes a personal enemy. His is a rural background, and big-city politics and law practice haven’t changed him. Sellers was born fifty-three years ago at Walnut Lane, Union Parish, La. he was the son of a Confederate Army captain who served in the Louisiana Legislature for twelve years and who was a member of the state’s constitutional convention. After his father’s death, Grover Sellers came to Texas in 1910 to live with a brother, and attended school just long enough to qualify as a first grade teacher. He was given charge of a one-teacher school near Ridgeway, Hopkins County, and later progressed to a two-teacher school at Rock Creek. Sellers taught lastly at Flora just before embarking on a political career—as candidate for Justice of the Peace. It was about this time when he won the hand of Miss Hazel Rutherford of Fort Worth, who had lived in Mineola as a child. She was visiting relatives there at Sulphur Springs when she met young Sellers. Sellers studied law at night and obtained his license while serving his second term as Justice of the Peace. He progressed to County Attorney, then to District Judge of the Eighth Judicial District (Hunt, Rains, Hopkins and Delta Counties) and at 38 became the youngest man on the Sixth Court of Civil Appeals bench at Texarkana. He resigned during his second term to become a partner in the law firm of Turner, Rodgers, Winn & Sellers in Dallas. NAMED ATTORNEY GENERAL. He went to Austin Jan. 1, 1940, as an assistant under the then Attorney General, Gerald C. Mann. Gov. Coke Stevenson appointed him Attorney General when Mann resigned, and Sellers was elected to a full term in 1944. The candidate has a clean record of Democratic party fealty, although he has never argued matters in harsh, personal terms. He supported the Roosevelt fourth term campaign while many Texas public officials remained silent. Too, he can point back to 1932 when he was a delegate to the Democratic national convention that nominated Roosevelt for the first time. Though he has many records of pride, such as the trial of eighteen jury cases in one day at Greenville when a 31 year-old District Judge, Sellers would rather talk to his Jersey herd. He has done a lot for the Hopkins County Jersey. Back in 1928 Sellers asked the Carnation Milk Company to put in a plant at Sulphur Springs and he helped to get land donated for the project. Carnation declined, argued that the county roads were too bad. GETS ROADS, THEN PLANT. Sellers launched a campaign for better roads and eight years later Sulphur Springs got the plant. The Sellers Jerseys had the honor of contributing the first milk. The Jerseys he started on forty-seven acres of poor land fourteen years ago are now a large, carefree herd, grazing on 350 acres of pasture improved by scientific methods. He was an organizer of the Rotary Club at Sulphur Springs and was its first president. Also, he is a Methodist, a Mason and an Elk. His dad, Capt. E. T. Sellers, was deputy grand master of the Louisiana Grand Lodge of Masons. The Attorney General took his first airplane ride last April 22 to see and hear Linda Lee Booker, his newborn granddaughter, who arrived on San Jacinto Day. The Sellers have two daughters, Miss Clara Lee Sellers and Mrs. H. L. Booker, Jr., both of Dallas. He is especially sentimental about Dr. Sam King of Sulphur Springs, his old schoolteacher, now 86. When Sellers became Attorney General, he invited Dr. King to witness the swearing- in ceremony. Dr. King couldn’t make it to Austin, so Sellers returned to Sulphur Springs to take the oath. Dr. King was present Saturday night when Sellers made his opening campaign speech at Sulphur Springs. Sellers was the first Hopkins County man to sit on the Sixth Court of Civil Appeals. Now he hopes to give Hopkins its first Governor. ALLEN DUCKWORTH. ############################################################# File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/la/union/newspapers/articles/1946sellers.txt