Terry C. Landry, Sr. | Louisiana Legends: The Series

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I'm John Denison and welcome to Louisiana Legends I'm sitting down today with a legend who has a long career of public service and whose story you'll definitely want to hear.

We'll sit down with Terry Landry in just a moment after we watch his biography.

What stands out in my mind when I think of Terry Landry is his commitment and his drive for those who are in need in the state of Louisiana.

He loves to help.

He loves to give its part of his DNA.

A remarkable man who rose from humble beginnings, a natural born leader, a Vietnam veteran, and the first African-American to serve as superintendent of Louisiana State Police.

These are just a few of the accolades for former state representative and New Iberia native Terry Landry Senior.

He is the eighth child of nine, born to the late Lennox and Agnes Chatman Landry.

He was a lot like my mother and father, a lot like my mother and father, always doing things for people.

He had favorite adults in the in the community, and he was always doing something for them.

As a young boy Terry often played the game of cops and robbers with his friends.

Terry always liked that game, but Terry was always the cop.

The others were the robbers.

He brought them for justice.

That's one thing right and wrong.

I've always seen that in him.

I can remember in high school, that was during the beginning of integration.

Principal would go to get him to come and help him to solve some of the problems between the kids.

The races, really.

After graduating from New Iberia, Senior High Terry joined the Army and served honorably for three years before returning home.

He became an officer with a local police department before leaving to work for Shell Oil Company.

In 1975, Terry married the love of his life, Sharon Broussard, and they raised three beautiful children.

But his desire to be a police officer never left him.

And in 1978, Terry entered the Louisiana State Police Academy.

He served in many positions.

Patrol Trooper, Detective Sergeant, Chief of Staff, Commander of the Crime Lab and more.

He continued his training at the LSU Police Executive Institute and the FBI Academy.

By 1997 Terry was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and in 2000 governor Mike Foster appointed him as superintendent of Louisiana State Police.

Throughout his years of service.

Terry saw the need to help At-Risk young people, along with another New Iberia native and businessman, William Dorie.

He started the Louisiana State Police Foundation to address the needs of underserved youth.

He loves these young people.

He saw things in them that maybe parents didn't see.

Terry mentioned to me about his chartering of a summer camp, and his mission would take kids throughout the state of Louisiana and would come to his camp and be mentored by state troopers.

You know it went very, very well.

And to this day, thousands of kids have gone to Terry Landry's camp.

I say that because, yes, it is a Louisiana state foundation camp, but to me it is.

Terry Landry's camp.

In November 2011.

Terry was elected to the Louisiana House of Representatives.

And became the first to serve Iberia, Lafayette and Saint Martin Parishes in the newly created House District 96.

He was a staunch advocate for public education, affordable health care, Medicaid expansion, responsible gun control and prison reform.

I've seen him go from a trooper into the legislature as a desire to improve the state, not for personal gain.

Although Terry no longer serves as an elected official, he continues living his passion by remaining engaged in community services for underserved citizens.

He's very sensitive to the needs of people, and particularly, I think, poor people, people who may not have the ability to necessarily articulate the problems and the challenges that they face on a day to day basis.

Sometimes he becomes the voice of the voiceless.

Terry's wife, Sharon Broussard Landry, lost a courageous ten year battle with cancer in their 44 years of marriage.

She was devoted to and supported Terry in all of his career endeavors, along with their three children.

The Landry's have five grandchildren.

I think he's had dreams from young dreams that we may not have understood as we were growing up, but dreams that I think he has fulfilled in many ways.

And that dream was be a significant service to other people.

Terry, it's good to sit down with you.

And before we get to sort of where we are through your career, we always have to go back and see where did you get started?

Tell us what your childhood was like growing up.

Well, I'm I'm eighth and nine kids My parents were Blue-Collar people, mother, high school diploma, daddy, third grade education.

But I understood the value of a good education and understood that it does take a village to raise a child.

My older sibling helped raise me My younger brother is three years younger than me, and I had eight.

We were poor, but I didn't know we were poor until I grew up.

But what we did have we had love and we have food and we had a network that is invaluable.

We just I had a great, great parents, had great, great siblings.

And that that's the foundation of who I am today.

It's a childhood.

All your needs met.

Exactly.

Didn't that you didn't know better.

Exactly.

Right.

Yeah.

And you've lived a life of duty.

Towards the common good.

Where do you think that drive in you comes from?

The drive definitely came from my parents.

I say I'm the 8 or 9 kids.

There were people, older people in our community, in our neighborhood that didn't have children, but said my mother used to lend us out to go and help the neighbors with chores.

Put in Johnson wax on floors by hand, helping people with chores in their yard.

My parents taught us that helping people and not expecting anything in return other than doing good for your fellow man.

That that's the foundation of who my parents were.

They instilled those values in you that you instilled in so many others through your years of public service.

Well, I hope that it transcended into me helping and helping the community and trying to make the community there I live in this great state of Louisiana a better place and a better quality of life for people who are unfortunate.

There are some people who don't have the opportunities, didn't have the family network that that I had that should make them no less important, no less critical or treating them in different than than any any other family.

I also would be remiss if I didn't mention my father was a practicing Catholic.

My mother was a strong Southern Baptist person.

They live their lives according to their religion.

So doing for others, treating your brethren who are less fortunate than you is is just part of our DNA.

Some of the less fortunate in our state, unfortunately, have been incarcerated.

And, in fact, Louisiana has had one of the highest if not the highest incarceration rates in the country now.

As State Police Superintendent, you tackled that problem.

Tell me what motivated you and how did you approach trying to work on that high incarceration rate?

Well, we knew that the state is better than the statistics .

It's better than this over incarceration.

It's better than the reputation in many cases.

That the stigma that's associated because we have such a high incarceration rate.

But but I came to to understand that it's not a crime being poor and you shouldn't be incarcerated for being poor or not having you shouldn't be incarcerated for having a mental illness.

And in many instances, our jails have become our mental hospitals.

In many instances, people do what they have to do in order to survive.

I'm not condoning and I never did condone anyone that break the law smoking marijuana.

We have a lot of laws on the books in this state that are today turning out to be laws and that are going to be accepted.

Marijuana possession.

There are many people who went to jail for nonviolent non-sexual crimes, and did a significant amount of time for it, I think, and did believe then and do believe now we need to focus on the violent crimes and treat the mental health or the mental ill as mental health.

And while we're on that, you've found some strategies that work in the rehabilitation of criminals.

And so can you tell us some of some of those programs that you worked on over the years.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that if you're doing the same thing and getting the same results, you need to try something else.

There are communities throughout this country, matter of fact, throughout the world that are doing new and innovative thing, recognizing the problem and not the symptoms, recognizing that when you make cuts, especially in Louisiana, when the budget is tough and it's two places you can cut, you can cut higher ed or you cut health care.

And it's usually mental health.

And we we allow people now to self medicate.

We use the honor system and people are sick and they fall off their medication.

And we have to do better than incarcerating people that we don't understand or people who have an illness.

I was fortunate to serve in the legislature to be a part of the criminal justice reform package where they provided data on top of data about how we would go heading in the right direction, wrong direction in our criminal justice.

And as a result of that, we were able to pass 17 pieces of legislation that are significant in it has dropped the incarceration rate in this state significantly where we are no longer the number one incarcerated.

We're still not where we should be or we ought to be, but we're working on it.

And you have to work on every day.

Every day of your state police career certainly.

And you're still involved I know.

And oversight through the legislature as probably a member of a committee or certainly someone who can testify with your professional background.

That's a long time of seeing bad things happen and seeing crimes and seeing things that can get you down.

You must have some strategy for keeping yourself going on those times when you just sometimes want to throw up your hands and go, I don't think I want to see this anymore.

How did you get through it?

Well, it's very, very difficult, but you have to have, I believe, a strong religious faith.

You have to rely on your faith and you have to realize that things that get this bad overnight and you're not going to change overnight.

You have to be patient.

You have to be vigilant.

But I think you also have to be faithful.

And you have to be faithful to the word and to what the scripture tells us.

If we practice religion, whatever religion.

I think you have to to focus on people and not so much results.

If you save one soul, then I think you've done a lot.

Certainly we have to save a lot more, but we we have to be vigilant and be faithful, resilient.

And we are we are a people we have hurricanes We build back.

We have tornadoes, we build back.

We have to continue to invest in people and not institutions.

And not programs but invest in people.

You broke ground as the first African-American superintendent of Louisiana State Police Tell us what that was like.

Any challenges that you may have had or any difficulties that you may have had in that role?

As someone who broke that ground?

You know, I got appointed by Governor Mike Foster.

Mike Foster was a Republican governor in his second term.

There was no political advantage for him appointing the first African-American to head the state police.

When I was appointed Mike Foster gave me some clear, clear instructions, do the right thing.

That's all he asked of me is to do the right thing.

And support the initiative for this great state.

Mike Foster's legacy is it's really unbelievable when people start looking at this man.

He gave me not only the responsibility to run state police, but he gave me the authority to run it.

No interference from politicians, no interference from Cabinet.

People or staffers.

He gave me the authority and responsibility.

And that is significant.

As overwhelming as it was I realized that I was not only carrying this burden, being the first African-American, I wasn't only carrying it for me and my family, but I was carrying it for our community.

And I could tell you, I got embraced by people from all walks of life, from all race, from all ethnic backgrounds.

I was embraced because people were proud to say that Louisiana had moved into the 21st century.

And the stigma about a person that looked like me could not reach that level of authority.

Today I'm still astonished at being appointed a superintendent of state police.

Thinking back over the years can you think of one big obstacle that you had to overcome really big that maybe you didn't think you could at first, but you were able to?

And if so, how did you overcome it?

I really don't know of any obstacles that if anything, it was finances and moneys.

And my current budget We were getting 10% cuts here and there trying to balance the budget.

Louisiana has a mandatory balanced budget.

And when the budget is out of whack, you have to make adjustments.

When I started state police, we were 7- 800 troopers, and we had the manpower, but we didn't have all the responsibilities of gaming, more carry safety, hazmat All those duties and unmandated, unfunded mandates became a little strain on our manpower.

We did some manpower allocation studies and showed the state police, according to their duties and responsibilities and their per capita of this state, should have had about 1500 troopers.

We were able to get a significant pay raise, the largest in state police history when we were there, 42% pay increase.

But we were never able to have the legislature fully understand the manpower allocation based on our duties and responsibility.

I often regret that, or think about how I could have done a better job to articulate that to the legislators.

Looking back over your life and work both legistlature and state police and other areas of your life What are you most proud of?

What really sticks out.

That's that's a tough one.

I can say a lot.

I'm proud of of the woman that I married, my wife, the mother of my three children.

I'm proud of my children.

I'm proud of my family.

I'm proud of the state that I live in.

There are just so many things that it's hard to come with one significant accomplishment because I always believed that it really wasn't about me, but it was about us as a people.

And so it's very, very difficult to come up with one individual accomplishment, acknowledgment that I'm most proud of.

I'm proud of a lot of things that we as a people in this great state accomplish rather than what Terry Landry accomplished.

I like how you too have taken a cue from and we saw him in your biography, Bill Doré about reaching out and putting coalitions together, asking for help and, you know.

Could you tell us a little bit about your friendship with him and tell me how much he means to you?

Bill Doré is a person that I met on the side of the interstate.

Did you give him a ticket when you were a trooper, is that it?

We came very close.

We came very close, but long story short, I met Bill on the side of the road and we had a conversation and it was a conversation about my reason for stopping him.

And obviously, I left some impression on him and he stayed in contact with me and stayed in contact with me.

And when I got appointed superintendent of state police, he wanted to know what did I need to help me succeed, not only as a state police commander, but how we can work together to make our community a better community, investing in people.

And I had a idea about a program I wanted to start with underprivileged kids.

Kids who are not exposed to positive role models, kids who have parents that are incarcerated, kids that that that don't had not been exposed to anything other than something bad in their lives.

And and we Bill along with myself and staff, started a state police foundation And he gave me the initial seed money to start it.

Not only did it give me the seed money, he brought our corporate businesspeople to serve on the board.

And today, we we've reached countless people and brought those kids out to a camp where a group was mentoring, teach them things that most people take for granted, how to eat with a fork and a knife, how to tie a neck tie.

Some of the things that that these troopers have taught, these young kids are life long.

They take them for the rest of their lives.

And I've had people come up to me, you don't remember me, but I was in Camp-Win-a-Friend when you were the superintendent.

Those things mean a lot.

That's very fulfilling to have.

Oh, very fulfilling.

And Bill Doré played a significant part of that.

And still today, he plays a role in it.

He's just a man that that gives and he gives with no expectation other than it's satisfied the purpose that he's giving.

I hope a lot of our audience will see you and see the example that Bill has for leadership and take some cues because we need the leaders of tomorrow to be leading like you men have been leading.

We're in this together.

I don't care where you live.

You can live in a gated community.

You can live in the highrise.

You can live in a rundown neighborhood.

But we're all in this together.

You've had many successes over life.

What do you think?

Is there any one key to success I think faith, as I said earlier, believing in people.

Colin Powell was one of my heroes.

And one of his ten rules was don't let your ego get bigger than your position.

And I think we sometimes we take ourselves too serious And I never tried to take myself too serious.

And I never tried to make it about me.

But I tried to try to understand if we have a disagreement , doesn't make me a bad person, doesn't make you a bad person, we just disagree.

And so I try to judge people on not on our disagreement, but with the things that we have in common.

Do you think we've lost the fine art of compromise, particularly in politics?

We've lost a lot of things.

Tell me about we thought we've lost a lot of things we've lost.

But the art of compromise, we are so polarized as as a country and as a people.

I in 1978, as a young trooper I worked around the legislature working in the security I saw that the legislators, the Don Cravens.

I saw those people disagree.

I mean have really hard hard debate on the floor but they were able to go into a room and talk about their differences and make compromise and put the people first rather than the party politics.

We've got to go back to the basics.

We've got to go back to understanding that we all are different and we all sometimes have different upbringings and different value systems.

Again, because we disagree doesn't make you a bad person and doesn't make me a bad person.

It's our differences.

That's exactly what make us great make us that make us good people and people worth talking to each other, right?

Is there anything looking back on your life you think I should have done that differently?

Have you had second thoughts about?

You know, I haven't talked a lot about my wife.

My wife and I were married for 46 years.

I had a very interesting career where I worked a lot away from home.

I took a lot of assignments that left her here with my three children.

She never once, never once asked the question, what about us?

It was always what was good for the family.

And she really was the wind beneath my wings.

She really helped me sail.

Because when you're when your spouse is happy, you're happy.

Happy wife makes a happy life.

I just wish she was here to enjoy some of the fruits of our labor because she was an equal partner in everything that I succeeded in during my career as a legislature and as a state policeman.

And you both have the legacy of your children.

We have the children and grandchildren and hopefully they'll look back one day and be inspired by something that we did right and learn from the things that we did wrong.

What do you want to tell the next generation of police officers?

I want to tell the next generation of police officers., Your job is difficult.

It is very difficult.

But don't be afraid to get out of those cars, those SUVs, those air conditioned vehicles, and go meet your constituents.

Go stop and check on an old person or go talk to a person in the community.

Go visit people when there is not a time of crisis.

Go to a school if you have children and eat with your children while you're in uniform.

And let them see something positive and let them know that you're not the enemy.

Finally, Terry, what is the next chapter of your life look like?

The next chapter of my life is in God's hand.

For the most part.

But where I can contribute, I'll contribute.

Where people call and ask me to help.

I will help where I can make a positive influence.

I'll do that.

But right now, I'm just enjoying life and enjoying being able to give back where people called on me to to do that and just continually trying to make people's quality of life as good as it possibly can be.

Terry Landry, 2021 Louisiana Legend I thank you very much, sir.

This has been a pleasure.

Thank you.

and the pleasure's mine.

And thank you all very much for watching.

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