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Judge Hadley Ward Fontenot was born August 30, 1939, in Ville Platte, Louisiana, the son of the late Hadley A. Fontenot and Wardella Morgan Fontenot.
Judge Fontenot graduated from South Cameron High School in 1957, and received his B.A. and L.L.B. from Louisiana State University in 1965. He was admitted to the Bar that same year, and entered private practice in Crowley, Louisiana. In 1968, he moved to Cameron, Louisiana and practiced law there until his elevation to the bench for the Fourteenth Judicial District Court in 1977. He became the first elected Judge of the Thirty-Eighth Judicial District (Cameron Parish) when it was created in 1979.
He is married to Martha Morazan and they are the parents of four sons and five grandchildren.
He is a member and past president of the Cameron Lions Club: Vice-President of the Louisiana Fur and Wildlife Festival; a former member of the Calcasieu Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America, having been both a Cub Scout leader and a Webelos leader. He is a member of the Southwest Louisiana Bar Association, and the Louisiana Bar Association. He is active in the Henri Capitant Society, an international association of civil law jurists. Judge Fontenot attends the University Methodist Church where he has served as Sunday School teacher and is a member of the Chancel Choir.
His outdoor hobbies are fishing, hunting, and gardening but his interest in local history has prompted him to read and research into the early settlement of Southwest Louisiana. He has written articles about some of the noteworthy events in the history of Cameron Parish and its locale. The 2003 Louisiana Law Review published a paper on the history of the Louisiana Judiciary delivered by Judge Fontenot at the annual conference of the Henri Capitant Society.
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