Southern Sheriff

A good ol' boy named Lee

BY LYDIA LUM

Photo by Lydia Lum
LEE: "I'm controversial, I say what I feel."

Sheriff Harry Lee simply scoffs when talk turns to racial barriers. "There's no such thing as a glass ceiling," said Lee, a longtime Louisiana law man and self-styled Chinese-Cajun cowboy. "If you want to do something, just do it." For 18 years, Lee has followed that vision as sheriff of Jefferson Parish--an area just outside murder- and mayhem-plagued New Orleans--where the population is mostly white and less than 1 percent Asian.

Until San Francisco Police Chief Fred Lau was appointed, Lee was arguably the most visible Asian American law officer in the nation. Lee jokingly claims he's "the only Chinese sheriff in the history of the world because Chinese people are too smart to get into law enforcement."

An avid hunter, the stout, Stetson-wearing Lee is a hybrid of John Wayne and Mao Tse-tung. With a larger-than-life reputation, he has become one of Louisiana's most powerful law men.

In his 65 years, he has repeatedly been tapped for leadership roles as a student, as a judge, and finally as a law officer.

Yet the friendly but blunt-speaking Lee has drawn controversy for saying what he thinks, especially for comments involving race.

For instance, he pooh-poohs affirmative action and glass ceilings, pointing to his own upbringing as proof that hard work and determination suffice.

That upbringing began in New Orleans, where Lee was born in 1932 in the back room of a Chinese laundry. He lived in a single room with his parents and five siblings. There was no bathtub, he said, and water was heated on the stove.

During World War II, the Lee family dropped out of the laundry business and opened a restaurant and bar. Like many Asian American families, Lee's father required the children to work in the business while going to school, as well as all day on weekends.

Popular in school, Lee was class president and student body president. The first in his family to graduate from college, he earned a bachelor's degree in geology from Louisiana State University.

Then he entered the Air Force. As a junior officer in the Strategic Air Command, he was ranked in the top 2 percent of junior officers in the entire Air Force.

After he returned home from the service, Lee's family opened the House of Lee restaurant in 1959. Harry was subsequently elected president of the New Orleans chapter of the Louisiana Restaurant Association.

When his youngest sibling graduated from college, Lee told his parents he wanted to go to law school. His father said it was fine as long as he kept working in the family business.

So he did.

While juggling a 72-hour work week at the restaurant, Lee earned a law degree from Loyola University. He was also president of the Loyola Student Bar Association.

He recalls opening the restaurant at 8 a.m., going to class, and then returning to the restaurant to close at midnight six days a week.

"You can do it if you really want to," Lee said of balancing work with school. "For a long time I was just talking about it. Finally, I had to quit talking, and just do it."

He practiced law for a few years, but got bored. He also served as an unpaid aide to the late House majority leader Hale Boggs.

In 1971, Lee was appointed U.S. magistrate for the Eastern District of Louisiana. His leadership abilities were tapped again in 1973 when he was elected president of the National Council of U.S. Magistrates.

When he visited the People's Republic of China as part of the 1972 Boggs/Ford delegation, it was believed he was the first American of Chinese ancestry to be officially invited to that country since 1959.

Because he was Chinese, there was some initial reluctance about including him in the trip, he recounted. So he offered himself as an interpreter. Once on the plane, Lee told the U.S. dignitaries, "I don't speak Chinese!"

As federal magistrate, he again became bored and resigned. He was then appointed parish attorney for Jefferson Parish.

In 1979, Lee was elected sheriff, defeating a popular incumbent who had been indicted for wiretapping. One campaign commercial showed Lee walking in a field with his wife and daughter wearing boots and a Western hat.

He has been re-elected every two years since then. He oversees a $65 million budget and about 1,500 employees. He made a brief run for governor in 1995, but dropped out. Political observers believe the sheriff's job could be his for life if he wishes.

But his tenure has been shadowed by racial controversy.

In the mid-1980s, civil-rights activists blasted him when he announced that his deputies would be questioning young black men driving "rinky dink cars" within the parish.

Lee, meanwhile, simply snorted that he was just being "honest" and it was hardly his fault if many of the criminals pursued happened to be black. His approval ratings among local whites soared.

Lee shrugs off critics who contend that he gets away with such comments only because he is an ethnic minority himself.

"I'm controversial, I say what I feel," he said.

During a recent visit to Houston where the growing Asian American community is still less than 5 percent, Lee tried to discourage a gathering of Asian American police officers from organizing strictly for ethnic support. He said he opposes most ethnically-based labor unions and groups, claiming they are detrimental to "legitimate" labor complaints.

Instead, he encouraged the officers to "work as hard as you can, go as far as you can go" without relying on affirmative action or other racially-based programs.

"If you believe certain doors are closed to you, then they are," Lee said. "If I can do it, if Fred Lau can do it, you can do it if you get off your behind. It's not going to be easy, but it can be done. You can go as far as you want to go."

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