Richard Grady

Background

Neeson is one of three children of Henry Grady Neeson, Junior. (1927-2015), a Shreveport insurance agent and real estate businessman who was born in Benton in Bossier Parish, and the former Helon Anderson (born March 1926).

Career

A former resident of Shreveport, Neeson now resides in Fort Worth, Texas. In 1979, Neeson unseated one-term Democratic Senator Virginia Kilpatrick Shehee, a prominent civic leader and an officer of the Kilpatrick Funeral Home and Life Insurance companies, who died in 2015. Neeson was reelected in 1983, when he halted a challenge from former Democratic Senator Cecil K. Carter, Junior., whom Shehee had succeeded in 1975.

In 1987, Neeson only narrowly defeated the Republican candidate, Ron Bean of Shreveport, 10,451 (502 percent) to 10,373 (498 percent).

Bean served from 1992 to 2004. During his Senate tenure, Neeson chaired the Committee on Transportation, Highways and Public Works.

In 1986, Neeson introduced legislation to raise the drinking age from eighteen to twenty-one so as not to impair the receipt to the state of up to $30 million in annual federal highway assistance. Neeson"s measure lost by a two-vote margin in the state House of Representatives, but the drinking age was later raised in a special session.

Achievements

• Four years later in 1991, Bean won the seat when Neeson declined to seek a fourth term, having narrowly defeated fellow Republican Tommy G. Armstrong, who had served fifteen years on the Caddo Parish Commission and a year in the Louisiana House of Representatives.