Lee Louis: Retiring, On His Terms

by Kim Edwards

"How do you edit 47 years?" That's what I thought as I arrived at the house Lee Louis shares with his wife Jan. Lee has been in TV news for 47 years. All 47 as a photographer at Channel 10. We poured a glass of merlot and just started talking.

Lee's start sounds familiar. After high school, he spent the summer (1960) sweeping the parking lot and filing film. That paid $200 and launched a 5 decade career. Lee attended Cal Western and SDSU, while working as a vacation relief photographer. Black and white, hand-dipped film. Four reporters. Four photographers. Two half-hour shows, covering everything from the sad to the strange to the side-splitting.

While working a Saturday night shift during the Vietnam War era, Lee heard over the sheriff's scanner that a large passenger plane had disappeared over El Toro Marine Base. Hours later, he gave his first network report, via telephone, for NBC radio, informing the nation that several dozen Marines, on their way to war, died before ever getting there.

More national recognition for Lee followed when he captured a police shootout in 1974. Police cornered a suspect in a house in Ocean Beach. Shots fired. Louis filmed. One patrol officer down. Another, a detective, an arm's distance away, was shot in the back. For his steady hand (and stomach) Lee won Sigma Delta Chi's "Reporter of the Year," and he still has the film.

Who else can say they chased a tiger in a Yellow Cab with Jack White? At the circus, Lee watched as one of the animal cages on the tractor-train flipped over. The tiger jumped out. Jack and Lee jumped in (the waiting cab) and yelled, you guessed it, "Follow that tiger!"

Over the years, Lee interviewed almost every president since Truman. He's taken the controls of a Navy jet three times and a railroad locomotive, once. His was the first TV crew allowed on the Spruce Goose after Howard Hughes' death. He covered the first space shuttle landing, Reagan's inauguration and the Royal Couple's first visit.

"That was the Golden Age of TV, a time when the public loved us. Now, it ranges from being tolerant (of the media) to out-right hatred." Louis says the slow decline started when TV was no longer a public service, but a money-making business. "The job's been good. I get to see and do things no one else can ever do." But now, it'll be on his terms, in his time.

Louis plans to create photo-essays for 10News. "Fun, interesting stories that don't always get air

Posted Oct. 2006