Patterson native's book wins military biography award

A book by Lafayette attorney and Patterson native Steve Rabalais has won the Army Hisotrical Foundation's Writing Award for Biography.
The award was announced at the June 15 members meeting in Arlington, Virginia.
Rabalais won for "General Fox Conner: Pershing’s Chief of Operations and Eisenhower’s Mentor."
John J. Pershing considered Fox Conner to have been “a brilliant solider” and “one of the finest characters our Army has ever produced.” During World War I, Gen. Conner served as chief of operations for the American Expeditionary Forces. Pershing told Conner: “I could have spared any other man in the A.E.F. better than you.”
Dwight D. Eisenhower viewed Fox Conner, as “the outstanding soldier of my time.” In the early 1920s, Conner transformed his protégé Eisenhower from a struggling young officer on the verge of a court martial into one of the American army’s rising stars. Eisenhower acknowledged Fox Conner as “the one more or less invisible figure to whom I owe an incalculable debt.”
"Fox Conner: Pershing’s Chief of Operations and Eisenhower’s Mentor" presents the first complete biography of this significant, but now forgotten, figure in American military history.
The book also tells the story of an interesting life. Conner perceived a calling to military service although his father had been blinded during the Civil War. From humble beginnings in rural Mississippi, Conner became one of the army’s intellectuals.
As the nation began to awaken to international dangers in the 1930s, President Roosevelt offered Fox Conner the position of army chief of staff, which he declined.