“Wild About Harry: The Harry Lee Story,” a documentary about the late Jefferson Parish sheriff and Loyola Law graduate, debuted in the Louis J. Roussel Hall on Sept. 30 to commemorate the second anniversary of the sheriff’s death.
The one-hour documentary celebrated the life of the well-known and controversial Louisiana character, who was the president of Loyola’s Student Bar Association and graduated with a law degree in 1967.
The Rev. Kevin Wildes, S.J., university president, introduced Jefferson Parish Councilwoman Cynthia Lee-Sheng, Lee’s daughter, to the audience before the showing and spoke about what the late sheriff did for Loyola.
Wildes said Lee was an adviser to Loyola’s criminal justice department and at one point reimbursed graduates from the program who worked in his Jefferson Parish office. He also had an endowed scholarship in his name.
The first showing was held for a group of about 80 friends and family, and a second showing was held for a full house of Jefferson Parish workers. The documentary included clips from an interview held with Lee just two weeks before he died from leukemia, said director Deno Seder. Seder published a book about the sheriff in 2001 and had tried unsuccessfully in the past to convince him to authorize a documentary. Producers Deno and Jeorge Seder were finally able to convince Lee after driving out to see him in Texas where he was receiving treatment.
“He said, ‘I’ll do it on one condition: Use it to raise money for the Leukemia Society,'” Deno Seder said.
The documentary, which took two years to make, did benefit the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.
The Seders interviewed 60 people for the documentary, from politicians to family members to prominent New Orleans figures, all who respected and spoke favorably of Lee. The hour-long documentary covered Lee’s life from beginning to end, both personal and professional, bringing back events in his political career such as Lee’s decision to pull over any black men driving in predominantly white neighborhoods and his idea to reduce the nutria overpopulation by hiring a squad of snipers.
“It really could have been 12 hours long,” Laura Comiskey Broders, whose father was friends with Lee, said after the showing.
Broders said though she loved the documentary, she wished it had spoken more of former U.S. House majority leader Hale Boggs, who was Lee’s mentor and whose wife donated money to create Loyola’s literacy center.
A Harry Lee bobble head jiggled on the screen as the end credits rolled alongside it, and the laughter from the audience was a testament to the iconic nature of Harry Lee’s legacy, another political character in Louisiana’s history.
Katie Urbaszewski can be reached at [email protected]
