In Memoriam – Harry Lee, Sheriff of Jefferson Parish 1980-2007

LNW_Sheriff_Harry_Lee With respects and condolences to the family and many admirers of Sheriff Harry Lee of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana-the second-longest-serving sheriff in the parish’s history and an extraordinary politician even by Louisiana standards. Mr. Lee lost a five-month battle with leukemia on Monday, Oct. 1. He was 75. The son of Chinese immigrants, Lee was born in the back room of his family’s laundry on Carondelet Street in 1932. He was a protégé of the late U.S. congressman Hale Boggs. Regularly outspoken, often controversial, sometimes impolitic, but always reelected (in 1994 his approval rating was 84 percent), Harry Lee served seven terms.

Read the extensive Times-Picayune obituary here and Reuters’s obit here. The New York Times obituary focuses on the many ways he angered his black neighbors in Orleans Parish.

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In Memoriam – Harry Lee, Sheriff of Jefferson Parish 1980-2007

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