L. B. Henry

Louie Brannon Henry, known as L. B. Henry (November 28, 1920 - April 13, 2008), was a figure in Louisiana parish government between 1956 and 1992. A plumber and businessman in Pineville, Henry served on the Rapides Parish Police Jury (equivalent to county commission in other states) from, first, 1956 to 1960, and, again, from 1968 to 1992. He was defeated for a seventh term in the nonpartisan blanket primary held on October 19, 1991.
Henry was the jury president for thirteen years, having been elected annually by his colleagues. From 1979 to 1987, while he still served on the police jury, he also held the administrative post of "parish manager". In 1982, the versatile Henry, was president of the Louisiana Police Jury Association, based in Baton Rouge.
Henry's police jury tenure largely corresponded with the thirty-two years that Geraldine Small "Gerri" Gerami (1924-2008) served as the police jury secretary-treasurer. She died five weeks after Henry's death. One of Henry's jury colleagues, Charles W. DeWitt, Jr., was the jury vice-president from 1976-1978 and became a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives in 1980 and ultimately served as Speaker from 2000-2004. Henry was a member too of the Pineville City Council from 1954-1956, when he stepped down in the middle of his term to join the police jury.
Biography
Henry was born in Rapides Parish to Annie Ethal Hooter (information missing) and her husband, Louie Manuel Henry (1894-1924), who died at the age of thirty when L. B. was about four years of age. Louie Manuel Henry is interred in Pine Prairie in Evangeline Parish in South Louisiana.
Henry was disabled at birth because the umbilical cord wrapped around an arm. He adapted to a missing forearm by using the half-remaining limb like a hand, which proved possible in his business as a plumber. Like Henry, another Rapides Parish politician, Fred Baden, who served as mayor of Pineville from 1970 to 1998, was also a plumber, and the two were friends for many years. Baden said that he worked with Henry to upgrade the infrastructure and procure sewerage service to the outlying Wardville and Lee Heights areas. Baden worked with Henry to establish an animal shelter for Pineville and Rapides Parish. "He loved people. He always tried to help the underprivileged," Baden said of Henry. of Pineville, 2,701 votes (58.5 percent) to 1,977 (41.5 percent). He was defeated for a seventh term on the jury in 1991 by fellow Democrat Stephen P. "Steve" Bordelon (born ca. 1939) of Pineville, 2,894 votes (55.47 percent) to 2,323 ballots (44.5 percent). The long tenure suddenly ended. Bordelon, a former Pineville firefighter, and like Henry a former member of the Pineville City Council, was the owner and operator of Bordelon's Tree Surgery Company. He held the police jury seat from Ward 9 for four terms and did not seek reelection in the 2007 primary. Bordelon died just over a month before the passing of L. B. Henry's younger son. He is interred at Greenwood Memorial Park in Pineville.
Henry was a former president of the trade association, the Alexandria-Pineville Master Plumbers Association. He was a past president of the Pineville Kiwanis International and a member of the Masonic lodge and Shriners. For ten years, he provided use of his L. B. Henry Rodeo Arena for the annual Kiwanis rodeo. Henry also dug water wells and operated his L. B. Henry Mobile Home Park on the Marksville Highway in Pineville. He was a cattleman and owned horses too.
The Henrys had two sons from Pineville, Luther Manuel Henry (born October 14, 1944) and wife, the former Bonnie Thiels, and Louie Rodney Henry (1950-2015) and wife, the former Patsy Rayner. Like his father, Rodney Henry was a plumber in Pineville. The Henrys' daughter, Martha Ann Henry Peters (born January 1949) and her husband, John R. Peters (born June 1948), reside in Homer in Claiborne Parish in North Louisiana. Henry had two surviving sisters, Louise Henry Graef Hebert and Lorraine Deville; nine grandchildren, and fourteen great-grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his parents and a brother, Elliot Louis Henry (1925-2000).<ref name=lbhobit/>
Services were held at the chapel of Hixson Brothers in Pineville. Burial was at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Ball, north of Pineville.<ref name= lbhobit/>

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