H. L. Willis

Horace Luther Willis, known as H. L. Willis (March 5, 1892 - October 10, 1979), was the long-term building and grounds superintendent at Louisiana College who served from 1952 to 1954 as the mayor of Pineville, Louisiana.

Background
Willis was born in the Winn Parish community of Newport to a Southern Baptist couple, farmer Julius Luther Willis (1867-1934) and the former Mary Theodosia Shumaker (1866-1936). He had six siblings, all of whom he outlived. Two died before the age of three. Julius Willis died at the age of sixty-seven from injuries sustained when he was struck by a car on the Dodson Road in Winnfield while he was attempting to retrieve a wandering cow. Mary Willis died of an illness two and a half years after the loss of her husband. The state legislator, farmer, and historian Harley Bozeman of Winnfield was a pallbearer at her funeral. Julius and Mary Willis are interred at Winnfield Cemetery.
Career
Willis graduated in 1919 with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Southern Baptist-affiliated Louisiana College in Pineville and was the first winner of the intercollegiate medal for track and field awarded in Natchitoches. For decades he was one of the most recognized faces on the LC campus through his position for fifty years as the superintendent of grounds and buildings. In the summer of 1932, the Louisiana College power plant was struck by a bolt of lightning and a student assistant engineer was injured. The problem was not resolved until January 1933.
A veteran of the United States Army, Willis served overseas during World War I, with the 75th Railroad Artillery as chief mechanic before his discharge in 1919. In 1926, he was commissioned in the Louisiana National Guard as a second lieutenant; in 1943, he was placed on inactive reserve with the rank of major. Willis was highly involved in civic activities. A Democrat, he served on the Pineville City Council from 1946 to 1952. He was a member and president of the Red River Atchafalaya and Bayou Bouef Levee Board. For a decade, he was the Pineville civil defense director.<ref name=bio/>
Willis was a charter member of the First Baptist Church of Pineville, a congregation particularly close to Louisiana College. He was a member of the Kiwanis International, Lions International, the Order of the Eastern Star, and a high-ranking official in the Masonic lodge and the Shriners. Active in the American Legion, he was also a charter member of the group Veterans of World War I of the U.S.A. His wife was Jane Willis (year of birth and death unavailable), also the middle name of one of his sisters who died the year in which Willis was born. Willis died at the age of eighty-seven at the Alexandria Veterans Administration Medical Center, located in Pineville. He is interred at Greenwood Memorial Park in Pineville.<ref name=bio/>

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