[UPDATE, Sept. 4, 2015] Services celebrating Broadwell's life will be held at 2PM tomorrow at Grace Community United Methodist Church, 9400 Ellerbe Road, in Shreveport.


[ORIGINAL STORY]  Civil Assistant U.S. Attorney John Broadwell has died after a long battle with cancer. He had recently turned 58.

U.S. Attorney Stephanie Finley says this is a great loss to the legal community, and Shreveport as a whole.

"But the positive point is that he left us knowing that he was OK with it, and wanting us to be OK with it, and to learn a lesson. And I think that's so big that he wanted this experience not to be in vain," Finley said. "He wanted to also make sure we knew how much he appreciated and thanked everyone."

Finley said John was a long-standing leader in the U.S. Attorney's Office, and a great personality for our entire district.

"Just an overall really, really on-point attorney, extremely intelligent, great practitioner, but a great friend," she said. "Really a person who always had a good spirit, spoke his mind, mentored a lot of people who have come through our office."

She said John was active and involved in the Shreveport community. He had more than 30 years of experience practicing law, the majority of those years at the Attorney's Office's Shreveport Division. Finley said he worked as much as he could while he was fighting cancer.

"He'd come into the office when he felt good. And if he couldn't make it through a whole day, he'd made it through half a day, but he was in constant communication, really a constant professional. But he loved the job," Finley said. "When you're looking at having a certain amount of time left, you want to spend it with the people you love. And because he loved the office, he wanted to spend it doing the work that he loved."

A memorial service is expected this weekend, but we haven't received that information yet.

In the 2014 August/September Edition of the Louisiana Bar Journal, Broadwell said his goodbyes to his Louisiana colleagues in the legal profession in an open letter, which can be viewed online on page 170. READ THAT HERE.

 

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