Charles B. Peatross


Charles Brinkmann Peatross was a lawyer, politician, and judge from his native Shreveport, Louisiana.

Background

Peatross was the older of two sons of Sydney Kerley Peatross and the former Margaret Brinkmann, she being the only child of Francis Charles Brinkmann, Jr., and the former Greenwood Hardy. In 1958, Peatross graduated from C. E. Byrd High School in Shreveport. In 1963, he received a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from Tulane University in New Orleans. He was a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. The next year, he obtained a Juris Doctor from the Tulane University Law School.

Career

From 1965 to 1966, he was a clerk for the Shreveport-based Louisiana Court of Appeal for the Second Circuit. Thereafter, he worked in the private practice law in Shreveport until 1996, when he was elected to the circuit court for which he had clerked as a young lawyer. He was reelected without opposition to the court in 2002 and retired in 2011; the courts covers twenty parishes in North Louisiana. Peatross was a former president of the Second Circuit Judges Association and the Shreveport Bar Association and a former state chairman of the National Institute of Law Officers. A Democrat, Peatross was succeeded on the court by a Republican, Frances Jones Pitman, a former state district court judge.
Peatross was also the Shreveport city attorney. In 1978, he was elected to the first Shreveport City Council under the new mayor-council government, which replaced the former city commission. He served on the council along with former Mayor James C. Gardner during the administration of Mayor William T. "Bill" Hanna. Peatross was the city council chairman in 1982. He also practiced law in Colorado and was active in the bar associations of both states. He was affiliated with the Shreveport Chamber of Commerce, the YMCA, and the American Red Cross.

Personal life

In 1962, Peatross married the former Betsy Chandler. The couple has three children, Christopher Sydney Peatross and his wife, Beverly Jane; Ashley Peatross Sanders and her husband, Troy, and Allison Peatross Walsh and her husband, Patrick. Peatross is survived by his brother, William Campbell Peatross, and eleven grandchildren. Judge Peatross's maternal uncle, George W. Hardy, Jr., was the mayor of Shreveport from 1932 to 1934 and like his nephew a circuit court judge, with service from 1943 until his death in 1967.
Peatross died at the age of seventy-four. A memorial service was held on January 31, 2015 at the First United Methodist Church of Shreveport, of which he was a member.