Joe LeSage

Background

LeSage was born to Joseph LeSage, Sr. (1895–1964), and the former Avalyn Taylor (1907–1991) in Homer, the seat of government of Claiborne Parish in North Louisiana. He played football at Homer High School and then attended Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, where he was the quarterback of the LSU Tigers in 1948. In 1949, LeSage graduated from LSU, where he was affiliated with Omicron Delta Kappa and Gamma Eta Gamma. In 1952, he obtained his law degree from the Louisiana State University Law Center and was admitted to the Louisiana bar.

Lesage served from 1952 to 1954 in the United States Army Ordnance Corps and the Judge Advocate General's Corps during the later portion of the Korean War He was stationed stateside at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and the The Pentagon in Washington, D.C..

Political and legal career

In 1956, at the age of only twenty-seven, LeSage was appointed to the LSU Board of Supervisors, the governing board of the university. He left the board during his state Senate tenure but returned to serve again much later from 1992 to 1998. He has maintained a lifelong interest in matters relating to his alma mater.

LeSage was elected to the state Senate in the general election held on February 6, 1968. LeSage and two other Democrats, J. Bennett Johnston, Jr. (the future U.S. senator), and incumbent state Senator Jackson B. Davis, defeated the sole Republican candidate, Tom Stagg, in an at-large race. The Senate seats thereafter were converted to single-member districts. All four state Senate candidates were Shreveport lawyers. Stagg, who died three months before LeSage, was appointed in 1974 by U.S. President Richard M. Nixon to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana in Shreveport.

LeSage practiced in the firm of Booth, Lockard, Politz, and LeSage at 920 Pierremont Road in Shreveport, Booth, Lockard, Jack, Pleasant and LeSage; the "Jack" in the name was the late Whitfield Jack. He specializes in personal injury, white collar criminal defense and estate law. LeSage was affiliated with the Louisiana Trial Lawyers Association and the Association of Trial Lawyers of America.

Personal life

LeSage was twice married. He was divorced from the former Lorraine Yearwood, the daughter of Boyd Yearwood (1907–1976) and Olwen M. Yearwood (1907–2003), later of Bossier City. The couple had two daughters, Susan Virginia "Susies" LeSage and Sherry Anne LeSage (1950–2010), a prominent Shreveport Realtor. Sherry LeSage, her mother Lorraine LeSage, and maternal grandmother Olwen Yearwood, formed Yearwood-LeSage Realtors. The trio was the only three-generations of women engaged in real estate in Louisiana at the time. In 1987, Yearwood-LeSage merged with Towery Real Estate where it remains. Sherry LeSage was named Shreveport "Realtor of the Year" in 1990 and was appointed to a term on the Louisiana State Real Estate Commission. She died days before her sixtieth birthday, having contracted an auto-immune disease, scleroderma, which attacks the kidneys and requires regular dialysis.

LeSage had two step-daughters from his second wife, the former Dolores F. Word, whom he married c. 1980. Deborah Word "Debbie" Jackson is married to Patrick Jackson, and Sondra Word Jordan, who is the wife of Damon Jordon. LeSage has two step-grandchildren, Victoria Laiche Jordan and Zackary Joseph Jordan.

LeSage was a long-term member of the Broadmoor Baptist Church of Shreveport. He donated his body to medical science.