Over a thirty-year career in the communications industry, Cyril E. Vetter has owned and operated newspapers, radio and television stations, a television production company, and a recording and music publishing company. He has been honored by Public Relations Association of Louisiana with the prestigious Communicator of the Year Award and has earned numerous other civic and professional distinctions.

He has a long and active record of community and civic involvement and has editorialized and published on subjects as varied as Louisiana politics, public health and cancer rates. In 1986 he underwrote a comparison study commission on Louisiana politics in association with Council for A Better Louisiana and co-wrote and published the commission's findings in a book entitled Requisites for Reform. The analysis and recommendations contained in Requisites for Reform are widely credited as helping frame the agenda of subsequent Louisiana gubernatorial elections. In the fall of 1995, Louisiana State University Press published his Fonville Winans’ Louisiana: Politics, People, & Places to critical acclaim and favorable public response. In 2000, LSU Press published The Louisiana Houses of A. Hays Town, a photographic history and biography of revered architect Hays Town. In 2003, Vetter and his daughter, attorney Gabrielle Vetter wrote and produced Deacon John's Jump Blues, a critically acclaimed and award winning CD, concert video and documentary film.

Vetter was drafted into the United States Army in 1967. He completed Infantry Officer Candidate School and attended and completed courses of study at the United States Army Military Intelligence School and the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center, and received the Top-Secret security clearance. He served a year in Vietnam and was awarded the Bronze Star. He has a degree in Political Science from LSU and is a 1972 graduate of LSU Law School. Vetter is married to Donna Staples of Baton Rouge and they have two daughters and three granddaughters.

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