James Wayne – Memorial Day

Our Living Legend is an attorney and decorated soldier who served in the Army during the Vietnam War. This episode is full of history and colorful stories about the military and growing up in North Louisiana. There will be more to come from Attorney Wayne.

 

 

James Wayne – Memorial Day

 

Count Time Podcast Living Legend James Wayne

 

James Wayne – Memorial Day

 

Selected quotes and notes from Count Time Podcast with LD Azobra Interview with Attorney James Wayne

Memorial Day is an annual day of remembrance to honor all those who have died in service to the United States during peace and war.
 
Good evening. Good evening. Good evening it’s 4:00 PM. Stand up it’s count time, time for every man and woman to stand up and be counted. Welcome to another edition of Count Time podcast. I am brother LD Azobra. Thank you for joining us today.
 
james wayne
 

Now, we got a young man here today who seemed like he’d been missing, missing in action for quite some time, but we’ve located, we located him and he’s ready to roll, to tell his story, to tell his history, to share the history from which he came in the history of Baton Rouge. Welcome Mr. James Jim Wayne to Count Time.

JW
Thank you very much. It’s good to be here.

LD
All right, whole lot to talk about. He got so much history, so much to share. And also he’s an attorney who created and started the Capital Area capital Area legal Services. Legal services years ago.

JW
And before that it was LaFourche legal Services.

LD
All right? That was before Capital Area. Who started the LaFourche legal service?

JW
I did because I was helping the farmers. See, at that time, legal service, free civil legal service was only for Baton Rouge, a little program in Shreveport and one in Monroe. That was it. Then when I got involved and I promised the Martin Luther King Foundation and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, if they give me a fellowship, I will try to get legal services, free legal service throughout the state, which I did.

james wayne2

LD
How you get in relationship with Mart Luther King Foundation to even ask for that?

JW
When I came from Vietnam, I wanted to go to law school and I wanted to work in foreign services, and I just want to get a PhD law degree and pursue my dreams. So when I came from Vietnam, they had a program sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, but they needed funding, so the Gillette Foundation start putting up the money. And General Casey, who was my hero in Idol family, helped me. And so he called me and said, there’s a program called the Woodrow Wilson Foundation in honor of Dr. King. And so it came out in the army times that they only taken Vietnam veterans and who had a degree undergrad degree and who wanted to get a terminal degree could qualify. There was over 5000 of us that applied for the job, for the position, 5000 nationwide. And surprisingly, quite a few of us from Louisiana qualified. I was one of them and went to Memphis, Tennessee, at the Lorraine Hotel where Dr. King was assassinated.

They interviewed, they narrowed it down to about 500 and they were going to take 50 out of that 500.I tell you who else was in that class who got a Woodrow Wilson fellowship. Name of Dr. King was James Schaefer’s. Engineering student from Southern. We were classmates. He was from Ruston.