Star Spangled Lady

One of Monroe’s most patriotic reflects on life, family and public service. After serving three terms in the state Legislature and a term on the Louisiana Tax Commission, Kay Kellogg Katz shows no signs of slowing down. Her continuing drive to make America better is why she is this month’s BayouIcon.

Article by Michael DeVault and photography by Brad Arender.

It was an unseasonably warm October night in 1999, and for the few dozen supporters gathered in the Atrium Hotel, the air-conditioned air was a welcome respite from the balmy Louisiana night. In the far corner, a television broadcast ticked off the results of the latest precincts, but for everyone in the Atrium ballroom, only one race mattered.

Each time the ticker showed vote totals for the special election to fill the District 16 seat of State Rep. Jimmy Dimos, who had resigned to take his seat as a judge on the 4th Judicial Court. Pacing back and forth down the middle of the aisle, Kay Katz worked the cell phone, trying to pull in the latest numbers from precincts across the district.

Shortly before the start of the nightly news, a campaign volunteer took to the microphone. Just as he began to speak, the television flashed the latest vote totals for the district. He quieted the crowd and began to speak about all the hard work. For her part, Katz was standing in the aisle, taking in the moment.

“I’ve just gotten off the phone with our campaign manager in Baton Rouge,” the volunteer said. “And it’s good news! Ladies and gentlemen, it is my privilege, my honor, to introduce to you our next State Representative, Kay Kellogg Katz!”

Beaming her trademarked smile and bedecked in a red-white-and-blue ensemble, she took to the podium and gave a brief speech, thanking everyone who “made it possible and who encouraged me to run.”

At almost 61 years old, Kay Katz was not the typical candidate to face down a much younger and well-connected Tony Cain. Now, almost 80 years old and after serving three terms in the State Legislature and a term on the Louisiana State Tax Commission, Katz shows no signs of slowing down. In the weeks leading up to Memorial Day weekend, she kept a schedule that would rival the governor’s.

On one afternoon, she spoke at a luncheon, an afternoon ceremony, and a dinner – all before returning home to plan multiple “talks,” as she calls them, for the following morning and lunch. There’s a youthful, boundless energy about Kay. Even the word spry, typically reserved for older, active individuals doesn’t fit. Katz is not spry. She’s vivacious.

“She never slows down,” says State Sen. Mike Walsworth, who served with Katz in the State House. “She is a force of nature when it comes to serving her constituents or working on issues she believes in – and she is devoted to both. When Kay cares about something, there’s no question. She’ll tell you where she stands and then why she’s working to make it better.”

Walsworth and Katz have a long friendship which stretches back to the very beginnings of his political career, when Katz was one of the volunteers on his first campaign. Even then, she was a powerhouse of volunteerism and community support, part of the Ouachita Parish Republican Women’s Club, an organization she’s served as president of twice.

“Kay has always supported me, always been someone I could turn to for help in the Legislature on projects, and she knows how to get things done,” Walsworth says. “She brings people together and unites them, and in this job, that’s a valuable talent – especially today.”

It’s a talent Katz has nurtured over a lifetime of maximized opportunity, dedicated volunteerism, and more than a little belief in a dogged, devoted love of community and country that is signature Kay. It’s been a remarkable run, especially for a woman who almost didn’t survive childhood.

As the newest member of the Kellogg family in 1938, Kay was born into a family of well-educated, well-read and well-spoken professionals. Her parents met in college and began their life together early.

An All-American football player from Tulane, Kay’s father joined the Navy during World War II, and her mother took a job at Selman Field. This established precedent for the young Kellogg family.

“From then on she always had a job,” Katz says. Very quickly, young Kay became the center of her parents’ world, more due to necessity than to her status as an only child. “As a child, I was an invalid. I had a cyst on my lung, and for a number of years, I had an open hole in my back, from my lung, where it could drain onto bandages.”

Stricken by a life-threatening condition, little Kay found herself restricted from playing with other children. She was also susceptible to infections, any one of which could prove fatal. Though she was a student at Georgia Tucker Elementary School, she missed swaths of classes due to periods of time in the hospital or an infirmary.

“I spent a lot of my youth with adults, in and out of hospitals, with family members, and they wouldn’t let me play,” Katz says. “So, I read a lot. I started reading when I was 4 or 5.”

Nancy Drew became her favorite, and she collected each book in the series and read them numerous times. She was drawn to Nancy’s spirit and envied the young girl’s adventurous life.

“I guess I liked it, because she was intrepid. She was the heroine,” Katz says. “There were no books back then where the woman was a detective.”

By the time Kay turned 8, her mother and father knew their daughter both wanted and deserved more in life than she could get with a perpetual wound and the constant specter of illness, infection or death hanging over her. They consulted with family members, doctors, and the latest research and found a surgeon at Duke University Hospital who had developed a novel new approach to treating their daughter’s condition: a radical surgery to remove the diseased lung.

The procedure wasn’t without risks. Doctors would not open the sternum but would, instead, remove several ribs to approach the lung. The surgery was dangerous beyond life-threatening, and her mother and father knew the outcome was far from certain. However, they also recognized their daughter’s life had three possible outcomes. Without surgery, she wouldn’t survive past 18. With the surgery, she would either die on the operating table or the doctors would be successful.

They didn’t hesitate. Loading up their tiny daughter in the family car, they made the long, cross-country trip to North Carolina. “If the stories I’ve heard are correct, I was the third person to have the surgery,” Katz says. “The surgery was a success.”

Reflecting on those days, Katz recognizes the strain her condition placed on her parents. She also knows the choices they made for her.

“In looking back now, I know the sacrifices my mother and father made for my health care,” she says. “Just the idea of going to Duke University to have surgery!”

She started high school at Neville High school six years later. When her father’s career took the family to Mississippi State University, Kay Kellogg transferred to Starkville High School. A tall, happy cheerleader, she soon drew the attention of an athlete at the school, Ben Katz. They were instant sweethearts. In 1956, when she graduated, she did exactly what her parents knew she would. She married Ben and enrolled in classes at Mississippi State University in Starkville. Bolstered by Nancy Drew’s intrepid spirit, her mother’s kindness and the strong sense of moral rights and wrongs she’d gleaned from her father and mother and their families, the newly minted Kay Kellogg Katz set off into the future.

“I’m not sure I had a plan,” Katz says. “I loved school, had liked school as a child. I love school!”

She pursued education courses and studied English and History, drawing on her love of reading and an interest in America’s past. Ben joined the ROTC program and the National Guard. He also took a job as a sideline spotter for the school’s games – which came with a $5 salary and two tickets to the game.

Soon, Katz found out she was pregnant, though she did not do what many other women might have and leave college. Ben worked two jobs, went to school, and served. She continued her studies and, before even earning her undergraduate degree, Mississippi State put Katz in the classroom, teaching remedial English courses to business and engineering majors.

Two more children soon followed, and after graduation the Katz family undertook the vagabond life of a family in the engineering trade. Ben took jobs first in Starkville, but soon positions followed in Jamaica, Indiana, Tennessee. In each of their adopted cities, the Katz family became involved in the community.

On more than one occasion, Katz served as president of the PTA. She also became involved in volunteering both in museums and for non-profits in Indiana. They were a young family on the move, and the future was bright for them. But in 1964, Katz discovered what many today realize is her truest calling.

Coming off a tumultuous four terms in the U.S. Senate, Barry Goldwater had earned the Republican Party nomination for president and would run against Lyndon Johnson in the general election. A brash conservative with idealistic visions of patriotism and a fervent belief in American exceptionalism, Goldwater’s platform spoke to the deepest parts of Katz’s love of country and a desire to make a difference in the world. She signed on to volunteer for Goldwater’s campaign, her first foray into politics. Though Goldwater would not win the election, the campaign left an indelible mark on Kay Kellogg Katz, and by the time the family returned to Monroe to settle permanently, Republican politics was in her blood.

Over the years, she continued to volunteer for campaigns, work as a precinct worker and support various local charities, including the many veterans’ groups for which she has a genuine affection. Her kids grew up and went to college. They started their families. Ben’s career continued to grow.

In 1996, Lois Hoover and several other friends stepped in to push Katz in a new direction. There was an open seat on the Monroe City Council, and they believed Katz was ideal for the role.

“Lois really encouraged me to run,” Katz says. “She’s the one who got me out, made sure I was knocking on the doors, pushed me to get out there and meet the people.”

Katz won in a landslide. Less than three years later, State Rep. Jimmy Dimos was elected to a seat on the bench, and Katz again stepped up. She followed three terms in the Legislature. When term limits brought her legislative career to a close, Katz wondered what was next. Then-Governor Bobby Jindal wasn’t going to let her rest on her laurels.

In Katz, Jindal knew he had found an ally on the commission and a powerful advocate for the taxpayer. He appointed her to a term on the Louisiana State Tax Commission. Jindal knew what her legislative colleagues had learned over the past years: Kay Katz is a fighter. Jindal calls Katz “a passionate advocate for her faith, Monroe and Republican women.”

“Behind her friendly demeanor and constant smile, there lies an indefatigable spirit and firm will,” Jindal says. “Kay can be relentless in her efforts to serve her friends, community and state.”

Combining equal parts mother and grandmother, a biting wit, a keen intellect and more than just a little patriotism, Katz managed to make significant impacts on the state. One of the key pieces of legislation she wrote, lobbied for and ultimately passed was a tightening of the state’s human trafficking laws. State Sen. Neil Riser recalls her efforts, noting that Katz was one of the earliest proponents of fixing a broken law.

“So many people pretended it’s not going on, that it couldn’t happen here,” Riser recalls. “But it was. Kay stepped up and made people realize the extent and severity of what was happening right here in our state.”

He points out that recognizing the problem was just the first step. She still had to pass meaningful legislation, which she did. Jindal signed the bill into law, marking the first time Louisiana recognized the crime of human trafficking stretched beyond prostitution and pimping.

Perhaps, though, Katz’s greatest legacy to the state isn’t legislative at all. It’s that patriotism and spirit of service that she’s consistently exhibited. That love of country helped transform Katz into a uniting figure for the region during some of the state’s and the nation’s darkest times. After all, her tenure in the state House saw the nation attacked on 9/11 and Louisiana’s one-two punch of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, followed just three years later by the devastation wrought by Hurricane Gustav.
No matter the event, Kay was there, in her red-white-and-blue to deliver an inspirational speech and to remind people what it means to be an American. To try to separate Kay Kellogg Katz from patriotism would be as difficult as separating the apples from apple pie.

One afternoon not long after 9/11, she was asked to speak to a meeting of the Monroe Rotary Club. When the president asked the membership to rise and salute the flag, he added a quip.

“If you can’t see the flag, just turn and salute Kay,” he said. Kay insists it was because she was wearing her favorite flag broach. For everyone else, though, the joke was as much a sign of deference and respect to a woman who, with characteristic spirit and a great sense of humor, has embraced her position as northeast Louisiana’s Patriot-in-Chief.

In the years since leaving the Tax Commission, Katz hasn’t slowed down much. She still maintains a busy schedule of public speaking events. She works tirelessly for Republican candidates in her district and across the state. And she keeps abreast of issues that affect the country through regular communications with leaders at the state and federal level. (This interview had to be rescheduled, in fact, because she was on a conference call with President Trump.)

And don’t make the mistake of believing she’s “retired” from professional politics, either, because Katz hasn’t retired from anything. Though she doesn’t foresee running for office again, she’s quick to point out, “I’m not dead yet,” and she still believes that it’s the job of every citizen to take a stand when they see something they think isn’t right.

With a limitless optimism, a boundless patriotism and an infinite heart for service, it’s safe to say we’ve not heard the last of Monroe’s star-spangled lady.

“Both of my grandmothers lived to 98,” she adds.