Former Entergy Chairman and CEO J. Wayne Leonard passed away Tuesday at the age of 67 after a long battle with cancer, the company announced on its web site.
Leonard was a fixture on the New Orleans scene after being hired by Entergy in 1998 as president and chief operating officer and quickly rising to the post of CEO the same year.
Leonard was born and grew up in Indiana and New Orleans was not the place that he ever envisioned calling home.
“I wasn’t sure that the cultural change that was necessary was possible,” he said in a February 2018 interview with Eyewitness News where he detailed his battle with cancer.
He took the financially troubled company through a hostile takeover and replaced the expensive paintings in his CEO office suite with pictures of Entergy customers. It was a way to make a statement about who was most important to him. Meanwhile he fell in love with the Crescent City.
"And it turned out, as I got to know people, it was amazing how the New Orleans welcoming type culture is so inherent just in the city, that what I wanted to get done in terms of just customer service and focus on that instead of trying to make money," he remembers.
Wayne never left, raising three daughters in New Orleans but in his 50s, there was a speck on his lungs so tiny doctors could not find it in surgery. Still, part of his lung was removed. The speck turned out to be nothing but years later in his 60s, Wayne, who never smoked and was never around smokers or asbestoses, developed stage 4, inoperable, incurable, lung cancer. Doctors say it's rare, but the scar on the lungs from the surgery, may have been the cause. Wayne began years of chemotherapy.
“We’re so thankful to have had Wayne both as our leader and as a friend,” said Entergy’s current Chairman and CEO Leo Denault, who succeeded Leonard following his retirement in 2013. “He helped our company refocus on what it does best. He led us not only to profitability, but to repeated recognition among American’s most trustworthy companies and best-performing utilities. More importantly, he was a man of deep personal integrity and kindness, whose strong values were foundational to establishing the family culture that we still enjoy to this day.”
During his leadership at Entergy, Leonard was named CEO of the year in 2003 by Platts Global Energy Awards, which also honored him as a finalist for that honor for an unprecedented 11 straight years. He also received top CEO honors from Institutional Investor, Diversity Best Practices and other leadership programs.
During Wayne's treatments, he began to empathize with the many patients on the other end of that chemotherapy IV drips.
"Cancer was really not on the radar screen so much until you have it, and then it's at the forefront, when you see how difficult, as difficult as it is for you, when you see how difficult it is for others."
So the man who grew up without means and became financially successful, decided to do something.
"When you have the opportunity later in life, where you can give back, you feel a lot of responsibility to do that," Leonard said. "Always done that."
He gave $1 million to the place he chose to be the warrior in the cancer fight with him, The Ochsner Precision Cancer Therapies Program in the Benson Cancer Center.
"The oncologist that I was going to select, was probably the biggest decision I'd ever make," Leonard said about the research he did to find the right personality and knowledge in his doctor.
Wayne underwent a clinical trial late in his cancer fight in an effort to turn around his grim diagnosis.
Despite the odds, he remained positive, realizing that hope is often an ally in the fight against cancer.
"You can't feel sorry for yourself, you know, whatever when you look at your life, because I've had, I've had so many good breaks. I mean, people that gave me opportunities that I never thought I'd get, ever," said Leonard, who remembers thinking New Orleans was an obstacle but later realized was a blessing because the city is unique and very rare.