Jesse C. Deen

Jesse Claude Deen (April 24, 1922 – December 7, 2015) was an American educator and politician from Bossier Parish, Louisiana, who served as a Democrat in the Louisiana House of Representatives for primarily Bossier Parish from 1972 to 1988. At times, he also represented a small portion of neighboring Webster Parish.^[1]

Background

Deen was born in 1922 at rural Eros in Jackson Parish in North Louisiana^[2] and reared in the Hargis community in Grant Parish north of Alexandria. He was one of five children of Marion Claude Deen (1889-1973), a native of Atlanta in Winn Parish native, and the former Minnie E. Durham (1888-1974), both of whom are interred at the Hargis Baptist Church Cemetery.^[3][4]

In 1940, Deen graduated from Montgomery High School in Montgomery, a town in northwestern Grant Parish. After service in the United States Navy in both San Diego and Long Beach, California during World War II, Deen earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, then known as Southwestern Louisiana Institute of Liberal and Technical Learning, located in Lafayette. Later, he procured a Master of Science from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, Arkansas.^[5] He did further graduate study at the University of Louisiana at Monroe, then known as Northeast Louisiana University.^[3]

Political life

In 1948, Deen came to Bossier Parish to work as a coach and principal at the Rocky Mount School in the Rocky Mount community. He remained principal until 1972.^[3] In 1960, he was elected to the Bossier Parish Police Jury, the parish governing body akin to the county commission in other states, on which he served until 1972.^[5]

Deen was first elected to the state House to succeed the retiring Ford E. Stinson, of Benton, the Bossier Parish seat of government, in the general election held on February 1, 1972. He and Walter O. Bigby, a lawyer from Bossier City, defeated the single Republican candidate, Glenn Earl Clark, Sr. (1924-2011), a native of Louisville, Kentucky, and a retired United States Air Force master sergeant and businessman in Bossier City.^[6] Voters chose two candidates from the three-man field. Clark finished a weak third with about one-third of the ballots cast even as the Republican gubernatorial candidate, David C. Treen, won a majority of the vote in Bossier Parish.^[7] Deen won his last legislative term in 1983 without opposition.

Representative Deen served for eight years on the House Appropriations Committee. He also sat on the House and Governmental Affairs and Transportation committees. He was vice chairman for four years of the House Retirement committee and for eight years of the Education Committee. He helped to establish and chaired the Rural Caucus in the state legislature.^[3]

Long after he left the legislature, Deen switched his party allegiance to Republican.^[2][8]

Personal life

Deen was married for sixty-eight years to the former Evelyn Young. Her parents were the late Casper Callaway Young, a Bossier Parish native, and the former Cardille Jones, who was originally from Simsboro in Lincoln Parish. There are four Deen children, including Larry Callaway Deen.^[5][3] Larry Deen, a Democrat-turned-Republican,^[9] is a former sheriff of Bossier Parish.^[10]

Deen was a trustee of the Willis-Knighton Medical Center in Shreveport.^[11] He also served on the boards of the Bodcau Soil and Water Conservation District and the Shreveport Bossier Vocational School. He was a charter member of the Bossier Parish sheriff's posse. He was a deacon of the Cypress Baptist Church in Benton.^[3] He died at the age of 93 on December 7, 2015 in the Rocky Mount Community. He is interred at Rose-Neath Cemetery in Bossier City.^[3]

References