Marie Norris Wise

She was born in Natchitoches, Louisiana in 1921. Both her mother, Crockette Kelly Jones Norris and her grandfather, Crockette Jones, were journalists in the newspaper field.

Following her graduation from Northwestern State University she taught at Gillis High School for one year. In 1942 she married Erbon Wilbur Wise. After he returned from his service in WWII, they then moved to Sulphur and started a newspaper business.

She and her husband established or published numerous newspapers in Louisiana. In 1998 they retired and sold the three daily and four weekly newspapers that they then owned. Earlier they had established the Guide Newspapers in the New Orleans area, a six-paper group that they sold to Cox Enterprises of Atlanta, Georgia. Their west Louisiana group of newspapers included dailies in Sulphur, DeRidder and Leesville and weekly newspapers in Vinton, Westlake, Moss Bluff and Iowa. For many years they published court news publications in Lake Charles, Shreveport, New Orleans, Leesville, DeRidder, and Cameron and in Beaumont and Orange, Texas.

Marie was a very active journalist who, for twenty-four years, wrote a syndicated Challenge of Genealogy weekly column that appeared in some thirty-five Louisiana newspapers. In 1994 she authored Norris, Jones, Crockett, Payne, Blanchard, a widely recognized genealogy of these families.

By the donation of approximately three thousand books from their genealogical library, she and her husband helped establish in 1987 the Erbon and Marie Wise Genealogical Library in the Louisiana State Archives in Baton Rouge.

In 1991 the two established the Erbon and Marie Wise Educational Trust to fund advanced education in newspaper-related fields in Louisiana.

In 2002 she and her husband helped fund the one million dollar Erbon W. and Marie Wise Endowed Chair in Journalism at Northwestern State University.

With her husband, and often with some of her children, she has been a world traveler, visiting some eighty-five foreign countries. Numerous times she has been to Europe to visit friends that her husband had made there during World War II.

Marie has been a prolific and widely-read journalist and genealogist, and a loving wife and mother.

She is survived by her husband, Major General Erbon W. Wise, U.S. Army Retired; daughter, Bonnie Marie Everett of Sulphur; son, Edmond “Eddie” Wise of Leesville and his wife, Inessa Wise; daughter, Ann Wise of Baton Rouge; son, Larry Hunt Wise of Sulphur and his wife, Dr. Myra Wise.

She was preceded in death by her parents, and by two brothers, Dr. John M. Norris, Jr. of Lake Charles and Crockett Norris of California.

She is also survived by her nine grandchildren, five great-grandchildren and three great-great-grandchildren.

Funeral services will be 10 a.m. Tuesday, September 27, 2016 at Hixson-Sulphur Memorial Funeral Home. Burial will follow in Mimosa Pines Cemetery in Carlyss. Visitation will be held 5:30 – 7:30 p.m. Monday with a Rosary held at 7:00 p.m. Words of comfort may be shared with the family at www.hixsonfuneralhomes.com