Additional Statements: Retirement of Guy Coates

CONGRESSIONAL RECORD
SENATE
PAGE S226
Jan. 13, 2003

ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS

RETIREMENT OF GUY COATES

    Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I rise today on behalf of myself, Senator BREAUX, and the entire State of Louisiana to pay tribute to a real Louisiana legend, Guy Coates.

    For the better part of 40 years, Guy Coates has reported on all aspects of Louisiana politics and State news. Guy Coates started his journalistic career as a reporter for KNOE-TV in Monroe and KSLA-TV in Shreveport. He joined the AP in 1968 in the New Orleans Bureau and moved to Baton Rouge in 1973. Guy became the bureau chief in Baton Rouge in 1991. He is currently the dean of Baton Rouge Press Corps.

    Mr. Coates has a long and distinguished career as one of Louisiana's finest reporters. Guy covered his first governor, Jimmie Davis, in 1962 at a ground-breaking for Toledo Bend Lake. He covered his first legislative session in 1965 when John McKeithen was governor. For the AP, Coates has been involved in coverage of the New Orleans sniper; the 1973 constitutional convention; the Luling ferry disaster; various racial demonstrations; the big '73 flood; every statewide political campaign and election since 1968; GOP and Democratic National Conventions; Apollo 14; the Louisiana visit of Poe John Paul II; executions at Angola; the Oakdale prison riots; and he was the only reporter invited to the marriage of Edwin Edwards and Candy Picou. Guy served as a witness to history for all of us when he was the only AP reporter on the Gulf Coast during the landfall of Hurricane Camille in 1969.

    Guy was perhaps best known for his alter ego, Jethro. As one reporter and colleague of Guy put it, Guy "was unique among AP writers for his political column, which included the homespun, irreverent observation of his fictional friend, Jethro." In Guy's final column, today, he writes, "So, it's time to join my old column soul mate, Jethro Rotheschild, who retired to our make believe world in the garage a few years ago." The entire State of Louisiana is going to miss the poignant insights into the political arena that made his opinion invaluable in any Louisiana political discourse.

    I know that my colleague, Senator BREAUX joins me in wishing Guy and his wife Jonica McDaniel many happy years together in whatever endeavors they choose to pursue. Louisiana is losing one of our finest reporters, and we are better off having had him report on our State, Nation and the world.·