Hypolite Landry, a gifted musician and record-breaking pilot who served as East Baton Rouge coroner for 27 years, died on Saturday at the age of 96.
Funeral arrangements had not been announced as of Sunday afternoon.
Landry was elected coroner in 1971 and served in that office until he retired in 1998.
Those who knew and worked with him remember him as a colorful, bold and kind person.
District Attorney Hillar Moore said Sunday that when he came to the District Attorney’s office as a fulltime crime scene investigator after his graduation from LSU in the 1970s, he quickly learned that Landry “always went out of his way to be a leader and a teacher.”
When Moore and his wife, Dawn, got married, not long after Moore joined the D.A.’s office, Landry drove them from the church to the reception hall and back in one of his handsome, antique cars, dressed in a tuxedo for the occasion.
“He was an extremely talented and smart man and also very kind and giving,” Moore said.
Chuck Smith, chief investigator with the D.A.s’ office, worked for Landry for close to 25 years, before going to the district attorney’s office.
“Hypolite was a loyal friend to me for all of those years,” Smith said.
Landry was a skilled pilot. In 1967, he made a solo trip around the world, setting some records in the process, in a single-engine Beechcraft Bonanza.
“He retrofitted the Bonanza, took some seats out and put more fuel tanks in” to make the flight, Smith said.
During the years Smith was working for Landry, the coroner set another record for flying to every capital city in the continental U.S.
After Landry learned that a relative of Smith’s was being treated for cancer in a Florida hospital, he had the idea to fly Smith in his private plane for a visit.
Smith remembers that — and also the emergency landing Landry had to make on a strip of grass in the Covington area on the way back, when the engine went out.
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