A. M. Leary

Alexander McIntrye Leary, Sr., known as A. M. Leary (April 30, 1873 - September 19, 1937), was a businessman who served from 1903 to 1905 as the mayor of his native Minden in Webster Parish in northwestern Louisiana.
Biographical sketch
Leary was the oldest of two sons and two daughters of William Penn Leary, Sr. (1847-1930), and the former Flavia R. McIntyre (1846-1934), who married in Webster Parish in 1871. A Georgia native, William Penn Leary had been a young soldier in the Confederate States Army and was thereafter president of the former Minden Normal College. Leary was engaged in the mercantile business, and his store in Minden attracted a large regional clientele. He was a stockholder and director of the Minden Railroad; in 1886, he was elected treasurer of the company. In 1897, he launched the W. P. Leary grocery store at 208 Texas Street in downtown Shreveport, where he and his wife remained until their deaths four years apart in the first half of the 1930s.
Leary was educated in public schools in Minden prior to the formation in 1901 of Minden High School. In 1894, he received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Richmond College, subsequently the University of Richmond in Richmond, Virginia.
He engaged in the cotton business in Minden, where he served briefly as mayor between the terms of James Peter Kent and Robert Roberts, Jr. His administration is remembered for letting out the bids for construction of the city water-works system. In 1896, he began employment in Shreveport with the wholesale grocery firm, the Hicks Company, for whom he was a salesman for twelve years. It is unclear if he was living in Shreveport while he was mayor of Minden or how he arranged regular transportation between the two cities separated by thirty miles. Upon leaving the Hicks Company, Leary joined his father in the grain business in Shreveport. He was also an agent for . In 1933, he was appointed district appraiser for the Home Owners Loan Corporation in Shreveport; in 1935, he became the HOLC district manager with duties over the seven parishes of Louisiana's 4th congressional district. He left that position shortly before his death. A Democrat, Leary was a delegate to several party state conventions and worked in the 1932 campaign to elect Franklin D. Roosevelt as U.S. President to replace Herbert Hoover.
* (2) William Penn Leary, III (1905-1958), named for his grandfather and uncle, an accountant and tax specialist who died of an apparent heart attack while driving his car near Natchitoches, Louisiana;
* (3) A. M. Leary, Jr. (1906-1994), a 1928 graduate of the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, married to the former Kathryn Stanton (1909-2004);
* (4) Graham Leary (1907-1991), a World War II veteran and an insurance agent;
* (5) Isabella Atkinson Leary (1912-1998), the first woman deacon of the First Presbyterian Church of Shreveport, of which her grandfather had once been the minister, and
* (6) Flavia McIntyre Leary (1915-1998),
Leary died four months after the passing of his predecessor as mayor, James P. Kent. Services were held at his home in Shreveport, with Baptist pastors Monroe E. Dodd and Wade H. Boggs officiating. He is interred, along with most family members, at Greenwood Cemetery in Shreveport.<ref name=stimes/>
It is likely that Leary Street in Minden, located off East Union Street, is named for Mayor Leary or for his father, businessman and educator William Penn Leary, Sr.

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