Education
In his youth, he labored in the strawberry fields, graduated from Ponchatoula High School, where he played football and basketball, and attended Southeastern Louisiana University, then College, in Hammond.
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Dennis Hebert
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Career
He was unseated by a narrow margin in the 1995 general election by the Republican Henry "Tank" Powell, 7,803 (508 percent) to 7,563 (492 percent). A native of Ponchatoula in Tangipahoa Parish, he was one of six children of Charles Bentley Hebert and the former Majorie Eschenberg. As a representative, he was chairman of the Labor and Industrial Relations Committee and vice-chairman of the House Governmental Affairs Committee.
He was an amateur boxer and from 1948 to 1954 was employed by Louisiana Power and Light Company.
He retired in 1983 from Shell Oil in Norco in Saint Charles Parish with twenty-nine years of service to the company. He was affiliated with the Roman Catholic men"s organization, the Knights of Columbus, Lions International, the Ponchatoula Fire Department, the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, the Childhood Brain Tumor Foundation, Baton Rouge Alzheimer"s Association, the American Heart Association, and the Audubon Society.
He was the 1961 "Ponchatoula Citizen of the Year", the 1997 Ponchatoula Strawberry Festival King, and the 1989 grand marshal of Krewe of Erin. He had an interest in ornithology, history, travel, and western films, even having appeared in several movies filmed within Louisiana.
In his last House reelection in 1991, Hebert defeated the Republican Steve Pugh, 8,876 (534 percent) to 7,748 (466 percent).
Pugh subsequently was elected to the House sixteen years later in 2007 to succeed the then term-limited Henry "Tank" Powell, who ended Hebert"s House tenure in 1995. In 1999, Hebert"s son, Dennis "Bubba" Hebert, Junior., challenged Powell in the primary but lost, 4,258 votes (32 percent) to 9,037 (68 percent). He is interred at Greenoaks Memorial Park in Baton Rouge.
Membership
He was a member of the Ponchatoula City Council from 1961 to 1972 and the Mayor Pro Tem from 1969 to 1972. As a sports referee, he was a member of the Louisiana High School Athletic Officials Association and the National Baseball Congress Umpire Association.
