William A. Culpepper

William Albright Culpepper (July 22, 1916—October 4, 2015) was an American judge from Alexandria, Louisiana, who served a six-year term on the state 9th Judicial District Court and for twenty-two years on the Louisiana Court of Appeal for the Third Circuit, based in Lake Charles, dates of his tenure unspecified. He was retired prior to 2002.

Life and career

Culpepper was born on July 22, 1916, in Alexandria, Louisiana. He was one of four children, three sons, of Robert Campbell Culpepper, Sr., a native of Jackson Parish, who was an educator, the clerk of court, and then from 1908 to 1912 a member of the Louisiana State Senate for Jackson and Ouachita parishes. The senior Culpepper thereafter studied law, was admitted to the bar, and relocated to Alexandria, where from 1924 to 1942, he was a judge of the 9th Judicial District Court, the same body on which his son later sat. William Culpepper's mother was his father's second wife. The former Margarete Helen Albright (1888-1949), a native of Durham, North Carolina, married Robert Culpepper in 1915 in DeRidder in Beauregard Parish. Judge Robert Culpepper's first wife was the former Margaret Diane Wyatt (1876-1911), the mother of William Culpepper's half-sister and half-brother.

Culpepper spent numerous summer weekends from the 1930s to the 1950s at the family camp in the former resort community of Fishville near Alexandria. In 1939, he graduated in 1939 from Tulane University Law School in New Orleans. He served in the United States Marine Corps during World War II. On active duty for three years in the Pacific Theater of Operations, he received the Bronze Star and retired with the rank of brigadier general. He was active in the Episcopal Church in the United States in both Alexandria, St. James and earlier St. Timothy's, and in Little Rock, St. Mark's. He was the founding president of the United Way of America in Alexandria-Pineville. He was active in the Boy Scouts of America. In 1973, he was chairman of the Alexandria municipal home rule city charter commission, whose members also included a late state representative, Jock Scott. The panel wrote the blueprint for the current mayor-council government, which voters approved in 1974 to replace, effective June 1977, the city commission government. He received a "Civic Oscar" from The Alexandria Daily Town Talk. He was an active hunter and golfer.

After the death of his first wife, the former Thelma Gilham Polk (1921-2000), Culpepper married his surviving widow, the former Jane Ann Foote Jarrell, sister of another Alexandria jurist, George M. Foote, a former city court judge who died in 2010. Culpepper had a surviving younger brother, Robert C. Culpepper, Jr., a physician. There are three Culpepper children, Bill (Barbara) Culpepper, Rev. Lamar Polk (Cathy) Culpepper, and Mallory (David) Marsh, who is named for a great-grandfather; six grandchildren, and ten great-grandchildren.

Death

In his later years, Culpepper resided in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he died on October 4, 2015, at the age of 99.