Fred and Ruth Zigler

Frederick Boyum Zigler, known as Fred Zigler (May 27, 1899 – September 3, 1960), and his wife, Ruth Midler Burgin Zigler (1898 – April 21, 1974), were business and civic figures in Jennings in Jefferson Davis Parish in southwestern Louisiana.

Background

Fred Zigler was born in Mayville in Traill County in eastern North Dakota, the son of Pennsylvania native George B. Zigler (1864-1936) and the former Gertrude Boyum. He attended Staunton Military Academy in Staunton (pronounced STANTON), Virginia, and then enrolled at Gem City Business College in Quincy, Illinois. At the age of eighteen, he became the vice president of his father's G. B. Zigler Company and moved up to the presidency of the firm upon his father's death.

Career

As company president, Zigler expanded operations. He towed the first petroleum found in the Jennings’ field, which extended westward into Texas, and also the first oil from the Lockport field near Lake Charles, where he developed a port facility. The Zigler Company operates barges in offshore and island waterways. The firm serves the entire Intracoastal Waterway from Brownsville, Texas, to Carrabelle, Florida. Its service area also extends into connecting waterways in Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida. It even services the Mississippi River system from New Orleans to St. Louis, Missouri, and the Ohio River to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the Illinois River to Chicago, the Upper Mississippi River to St. Paul, Minnesota, the Missouri River to Kansas City, the Cumberland River to Nashville, Tennessee, and the Chattanooga and the Kanawaha rivers to Charleston, West Virginia.

Zigler worked to develop the Jennings Airport and to establish a community hotel named for his father, the George B. Zigler Hotel. He also had numerous real estate holdings, including office and apartment buildings. Fred Zigler also became president of the Southwest Louisiana Community Hotel Corporation.

Mrs. Zigler

Zigler married the former Ruth Midler Burgin, a daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Louis Burgin of Rayne in Acadia Parish. She attended the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, formerly known as the University of Southwestern Louisiana, the Palmer Secretarial School (location unknown), and the Parsons School of Fine and Applied Arts, now the Parsons School of Design, in New York City.

Mrs. Zigler was chairman of the board of The Fred and Ruth B. Zigler Foundation known for its scholarship program for students in Jefferson Davis Parish. In 1963, she established the Zigler Museum Foundation. She was the president of the Women of the Presbyterian Church, Campfire Girls, and the Jennings Library Board. She was a life member of the National Council of State Garden Clubs in the State of Louisiana. She served on the executive board of the Louisiana Boy's Village. She was a "worthy matron" of the Order of the Eastern Star and organized and served as first president of the Arts and Crafts Club of Jennings.The Zigler Art Museum operates inside Jennings City Hall. She received several awards for "Outstanding Citizenship," including the "V. F. W. Citation for Outstanding Citizenship" in Jefferson Davis Parish for her philanthropic workeation. She was a director of the George B. Zigler Hotel, sat on the Jennings Zoning Board, and was the chairman of the board of the G. B. Zigler Company from her husband's death in 1960 to 1965. She was a member of the Jefferson Davis Parish Republican Executive Committee. Democratic Governor Edwin Edwards named her to the Louisiana Bicentennial Commission.

The Ziglers were married from 1920 until his death of a heart attack in 1960 at the age of sixty-one. Mrs. Zigler died fourteen years later. The couple is interred at Greenwood Cemetery in Jennings.