re: Tell me about Earl K. Long

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I’ve heard that he was committed to a mental institution at one time.

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It was a hospital in North Baton Rouge.

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He was committed to the mental hospital and then fired the state doctor in charge of mental health and the new one he appointed set him free.

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He was later sent to John Sealy in Galveston by his wife and the Louisiana Director of Hospitals so he couldn't get out as easily as he was able to in his home State.

Interesting character.


St. Mary's News Now - "When Earl K. Long's Mental State Made News"

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He was always volatile and hot-headed, but reporters began to publicly hint at the governor’s overuse of alcohol as early as April, when the Associated Press reported the governor’s hijacking of a legislative budget hearing “with his bottle of Tichenor’s antiseptic on the table before him.”

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But things really began to unravel in late May, when Long railed for more than an hour and a half and, the AP said, “poured out scathing criticism” on legislators and political enemies … “as he screamed into the House microphone in a stinging, stump-speaking style.” They noted that he drank from a glass filled with “what appeared to be grape juice” during the tirade.

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Two days later, the governor’s wife, Blanche, announced that Long had been ordered to bed “for several days” and that he was suffering from exhaustion. One of the people helping to make that decision was Jesse Bankston, Louisiana’s director of hospitals, who thought Earl needed more than bed rest at the governor’s mansion.

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He thought Long needed to be confined for psychiatric evaluation and that the confinement needed to be outside Louisiana, so that he could not use his powers as governor.
On Saturday, May 30, Earl was strapped to a gurney, put aboard an Air National Guard airplane, and flown to the John Sealy Hospital in Galveston. The doctors were told that Earl had agreed to be admitted. They soon found out differently. The AP reported that Long “refused to cooperate with hospital authorities.” The Galveston Daily News said his refusal included “a couple of violent episodes.”

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