Thomas Calloway Lea, Jr.

Thomas Calloway Lea, Jr. (October 29, 1877 – August 2, 1945), was a prominent American attorney from El Paso, Texas, and mayor of that city from 1915 to 1917.

Biography

Lea was born in Independence, Missouri, to Thomas Calloway and Amanda Rose Lea.

His father, Thomas Calloway, Sr., (512 North Liberty Street in Independence) was county surveyor (commissioner) for Jackson County from 1870 to 1880 (a position that Harry S. Truman would have from 1925-1933), then was deputy surveyor until his death on April 20, 1910.

His grandfather, Dr. Pleasant John Graves Lea (also grandfather of Homer Lea, author of The Vermilion Pencil: A Romance of China), is the namesake for Lee's Summit, Missouri, although the name became spelled with an "e" instead of "a" because a stone culvert next to the Missouri Pacific Railroad station was set this way. Homer Lea would be appointed military advisory to Sun Yat-sen, the leader of the Chinese Republic.

Thomas, Jr., received an LL.B. degree in 1898 from Kansas City Law School. Lea began his law practice in 1904 and was soon appointed police-court judge. On June 29, 1906, he married Zola May Utt, and the couple would have three sons, including the noted artist and writer Tom Lea. Thomas, Jr., volunteered for both the Spanish–American War and World War I (Homer Lea also wanted to join the Army with Thomas, but because of his medical condition was not accepted), and during the former he went to Fort Sam Houston, in San Antonio, Texas, for officers' training school. After the end of his service in the Spanish–American War, he decided to stay in Texas, moving to El Paso.

Lea became a renowned criminal lawyer in the city, and with his partner, R. Ewing Thomason, developed acclaim for their use of dramatic emotionalism in the courtroom. In April, 1911, he presided over the hearing of community activist Lázaro Gutiérrez de Lara. For some time, Lea served as the official attorney for former Mexican president Victoriano Huerta. Lea's administration passed the first U.S. law banning Mexican hemp because of its association with Mexican revolutionaries.

Lea and Thomason decided to enter politics, and took on two more partners, J. G. McGrady and Eugene T. Edwards. Lea was elected Mayor (defeating incumbent Charles E. "Henry" Kelly), and Thomason was elected to the Texas House of Representatives in 1916. Harry S. Truman would later appoint Thomason as a federal district judge. As mayor, Lea made a public declaration, after Pancho Villa raided Columbus, New Mexico, on March 9, 1916, that he would arrest Villa if he dared enter El Paso. Villa then responded by offering a thousand pesos worth of gold bounty on Lea. The Lea children had to have a police escort to and from school.

In 1936, Zola May died of cancer, and Lea remarried on May 20, 1939, to Rosario Partida Archer (née Partida). Thomas Calloway Lea, Jr. died in El Paso at Southwestern General Hospital, of a heart attack, on August 2, 1945. Lea was a forty-year member of the State Bar of Texas and a Mason.

Controversy

Excerpts from: Ringside Seat to a Revolution, An Underground Cultural History of El Paso and Juarez: 1893–1923

Most historians have forgotten about this obscure incident that took place on the border in 1917. I first heard of the U.S. government's policy that provoked these riots while I was still in high school. One evening, during a family dinner, my great-aunt Adela Dorado shared her memories with us about her experiences as a young woman during the Mexican Revolution. She recalled that American authorities regularly forced her and all other working-class Mexicans to take a bath and be sprayed with pesticides at the Santa Fe Bridge whenever they needed to cross into the United States. My great-aunt, who worked as a maid in El Paso during the revolution, told us she felt humiliated for being treated as a "dirty Mexican." She related how on one occasion the U.S. customs officials put her clothes and shoes through a large secadora (dryer) and her shoes melted.

Many years later, as part of my research for this book at the National Archives in the Washington, D.C. area, I came upon some photographs taken in 1917 in El Paso. The pictures, which were part of the U.S. Public Health records, showed large steam dryers used to disinfect the clothes of border crossers at the Santa Fe Bridge. ... the account of the 1917 Bath Riots at the Santa Fe Bridge. It is the story of a traumatic separation, an event that perhaps best epitomizes the year that the border between El Paso and Juárez, in the memories of many of its citizens, shut down for good. ... Tom Lea sent letters and telegrams to Washington officials for months asking for a full quarantine against Mexicans at the border. He wanted a "quarantine camp" to hold all Mexican immigrants for a period of 10 to 14 days to make sure that they were free of typhus before being allowed to cross into the United States. The local Public Health Service officials viewed the mayor's request as extreme.

"Mayor Lee (sic) wants an absolute quarantine against Mexico. When Mayor Lee gets excited he always wires some one in Washington. The last time this occurred he sent a message to the President," complained Dr. B. J. Lloyd, the public health service official stationed in El Paso.

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Additional Links

Recognition

• Thomas C. Lea Park in El Paso

References and notes