Career
He was a state senator from Lafourche and Terrebonne parishes from 1930 to 1940. During the 1960s, Peltier served on the since disbanded Louisiana State Board of Education as the elected member designated for Louisiana"s 3rd congressional district. Peltier polled 44,413 votes (647 percent) to deGravelles" 24,236 votes (353 percent).
In that same election Hall Lyons, a Lafayette oilman and the younger son of Louisiana Republican state chairman Charlton Lyons, failed to unseat veteran United States. Representative Edwin East. Willis for the Third District House seat.
Bill Dodd was then the education superintendent, a position now appointed by the governor, and the then 11-member state board was all-Democratic. In September 1966, while running for the state education board, Peltier told an interviewer:
I"m 66 years young, and I guess I"m sort of a jack-of-all-trades.
I mean I go to my office every day. I have a lot of things going for medical
I may have less money than some people, but I have more nerve than most.
The eighth of nine children, Peltier was the son of a Cajun Roman Catholic couple, Ozeme Euzelien Peltier (1862-1933) and the former Heloise Odelia Cancienne (1864-1908). His mother died before his tenth birthday. Ozeme Peltier then married the former Celeste Marie Lenain (1872-1958), who had previously been married to Louis Oleus Gaubert.
Harvey Peltier, Junior., like his father, served in the Louisiana State Senate from the Lafourche/Terrebonne constituency.
His tenure was from 1964 to 1976. From 1975 to 1980, Peltier, Junior., was the first president of the trustees of the University of Louisiana System, a successor education board of the one on which his father had served.
The other Peltier children include Bernice P. Harang, James R. Peltier, Senior, Donald Louis Peltier (1926-2008) and Richard Benton Peltier (1938-2007). Peltier died in 1977 at the age of seventy-eight.
He is interred in the family tomb at Saint Joseph Cemetery in Thibodaux.