Virginia Shehee
Virginia Ruth Shehee was a businesswoman and politician from Louisiana, United States, and the first woman elected to the Louisiana State Senate.Life and career
Born July 12, 1923 in Houston, Texas to Nell Peters and Lonnie Benjamin Kilpatrick, she was a fifth-generation descendant of the Old Three Hundred who settled in Texas in 1824. During the Great Depression her family moved to Shreveport, Louisiana, where they founded Rose-Neath Funeral Home and Kilpatrick Life Insurance Company.
Shehee attended C. E. Byrd High School, and worked as a secretary during summers for future Louisiana Governor Jimmie Davis. She attended Stephens College for one year, and Centenary College of Louisiana where she obtained a Bachelor of Arts in English in 1943, and was a member of Zeta Tau Alpha fraternity. Shehee earned a Master's Degree in Social Work from Southern Methodist University.
After World War II Shehee visited Germany where she worked for the American Red Cross, participating in the Berlin Airlift. Returning to the United States, she married attorney John Andrew Guy and moved to Washington, D.C. The couple had three children before divorcing in 1956. That same year Shehee's father died, and she and her children moved back to Shreveport to help her mother run the family businesses. Shehee married again, to William Peyton Shehee Jr., and had a fourth child.
Shehee entered politics and became the first woman elected to the Louisiana State Senate, serving the 38th District from 1976 to 1980.
She died July 6, 2015, and was interred at Forest Park Cemetery in Shreveport.
