Obituary for Jerome Milligan “Jerry” LaFleur

Jerry LaFleur: A Life Fully Lived

Jerome Milligan “Jerry” LaFleur

August 15, 1934 – September 4, 2026

With broken hearts, we share the passing of our beloved Jerome Milligan “Jerry” LaFleur, affectionately known to his family as “Papi,” on September 4, 2026, in Annapolis, Maryland. He was 92 years old.

Surrounded by his wife, Silvia, and his children, Jacques and Anne, who held his hands as he took his final breath, Jerry completed a remarkable journey, one that began on a small farm in rural Louisiana and ultimately carried him millions of miles across six continents in service to his country.

His journey took him around the world.

Jerry was born on August 15, 1934, in Eola, Louisiana, the son of Edwin G. LaFleur and Addelene Kelley LaFleur. He and his brothers grew up on their family’s 20-acre farm in rural Avoyelles Parish, where Watermelon Bayou flows into the brown waters of Bayou Boeuf.

His childhood during the Great Depression bore little resemblance to the remarkable international life that awaited him. The family’s unpainted farmhouse had neither running water nor electricity until 1946, and Jerry grew up milking cows, picking cotton, shucking corn and cutting sugar cane.

In 1939, a Mellow Joy coffee salesman visited their family and offered his parents a complete set of Compton’s Picture Encyclopedias in exchange for a commitment to purchase their coffee. This improbable event resulted in being an extraordinary educational gift for Jerry and his brothers. Almost overnight, these magnificent books became a source of fascination and wonder for the young LaFleur brothers and windows onto places Jerry could scarcely have imagined he would one day see for himself; not merely once, but often many times over.

Jerry attended St. Anthony’s Parochial School and Bunkie High School before relocating to Texas in 1952. He graduated from Industrial High School in Vanderbilt, Texas, in 1954, where he excelled in baseball and served as president of the Future Farmers of America chapter. His favorite team was the Boston Red Sox.

For several years afterward, he worked as a roustabout for oil companies in Louisiana before being drafted into the United States Army in 1958. Following basic training at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, he was assigned to the 56th Artillery Brigade as a battalion postal officer at Loring Air Force Base in Maine.

There was another detail from those Army years that Jerry never tired of remembering: Elvis Presley was serving in the Army during the same period and was stationed at the same base as Jerry for a time. For a man who loved Elvis, it remained a treasured piece of his own history.

Jerry was honorably discharged in 1960 and went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts in World Geography from the University of Southwestern Louisiana in Lafayette in 1963.

It was perhaps inevitable that a young man who had spent his childhood studying the world in encyclopedias would eventually make that world his life.

In July 1963, Jerry joined the United States Department of State and was assigned to the Office of Diplomatic Couriers. What followed was a remarkable 38-year career in the Foreign Service: 18 years as a Diplomatic Courier and 20 years in management.

His work took him from Panama City to Manila, Frankfurt, Bangkok and Washington, D.C., and ultimately around the world; not once, but many times. Over the course of his career, Jerry traveled several million miles across six of the world’s seven continents, carrying classified material of the United States Government to American embassies and consulates.

By the end of his diplomatic career and lifetime of travel, there were only three countries he had not visited: North Korea, Cuba and Mongolia. Circumstances and U.S. relations had kept him from reaching them.

He witnessed a period of history from a vantage point few people ever experience.

In 1980, Jerry was selected for a supervisory position at the Washington Regional Courier Office. Three years later, the Department of State’s Office of Communications selected him for temporary duty with the White House Advance Office in preparation for the 1983 G-7 Economic Summit in Williamsburg, Virginia.

That assignment began a remarkable series of White House advance trips for economic summits and presidential travel during the Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations. His work took him to cities including Venice, Rome, Berlin, London, Dublin, Seoul, Shanghai, Tokyo, Moscow, Ankara, New Delhi, Beijing, St. Petersburg, Warsaw, Bucharest and Istanbul.

In 1984, Jerry became a supervisor at the Bangkok Regional Courier Office. In 1987, he returned to Washington as Deputy Director of the U.S. Diplomatic Courier Service, and in 1988, he was appointed Director. In 1990, he received the Department of State’s Superior Honor Award for an initiative that restored direct professional hiring to the Diplomatic Courier Service.

Following the breakup of the Soviet Union, Jerry was sent to Vilnius in 1991 at the request of the Lithuanian government to assist the newly independent country in establishing its own diplomatic courier service using the American system as a model.

In 1993, he was promoted into the Senior Foreign Service and assigned to the Frankfurt Regional Courier Office. There, he helped oversee the immense logistical challenge of establishing and maintaining diplomatic courier routes to the newly independent republics of the former Soviet Union.

Jerry returned to Washington in 1997 to serve once again as Director of the Diplomatic Courier Service, a position he held until his retirement in 1999.

During his years as Director, he represented the United States at international conferences of diplomatic courier chiefs around the world, working with his counterparts on matters of diplomatic protocol, immunity and the rapidly changing realities of international aviation and airport security.

At his retirement ceremony at Fort McNair on August 31, 1999, Jerry received one of the honors of which he was most proud: the Department of State’s Distinguished Honor Award, recognizing his “38 years of sustained professionalism and dedication to the Department of State.” The award was signed by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

Although Jerry officially retired from the Department of State in 1999, his work as a Diplomatic Courier was not quite finished. From 2000 to 2015, he was intermittently called upon to undertake worldwide courier missions when personnel shortages arose.

His final Diplomatic Courier mission came in June 2014, less than two months before his 80th birthday. Over 17 days, Jerry completed two 665-mile overland journeys between Helsinki, Finland, and Moscow, Russia, a memorable final chapter in a career that had carried him millions of miles around the world.

But perhaps one of the most remarkable journeys of Jerry’s life had nothing to do with an official diplomatic mission.

After an assignment in South America, Jerry decided to drive home from Panama City to Louisiana in his Thunderbird. Just two miles from home, after traveling more than 3,000 miles, tall Louisiana sugar cane obscured his view and sound of a railroad crossing. Jerry’s car collided with a train that passed through only once a month.

He survived.

For a man whose life would encompass millions of miles by air, road and rail, it became one more chapter in a life that sometimes seemed almost too remarkable to be true.

Jerry possessed an exceptional work ethic and believed deeply in doing things well. Two simple pieces of advice captured much of the way he approached life: “Never give up” and “Do the best at what you do, no matter what it is.”

For all the incredible accomplishments of his professional life, however, the greatest adventure of Jerry’s life was not diplomatic at all.

It began in Vienna, Austria, in 1969.

There, an American diplomat from rural Louisiana met a beautiful Swiss ballerina named Silvia Romanelli, born in Sierre, Switzerland, who was studying at the Ballet Academy of Vienna. Their paths crossed at a marble café table in the International Intercontinental Hotel in Vienna, a serendipitous encounter that would change the course of both their lives.

In June 1972, Jerry and Silvia were married in Zermatt, Switzerland, beneath the Matterhorn, beginning a remarkable partnership that would span 54 years and a lifetime of countries, cultures, adventures, challenges, laughter and love.

That September, only three months after their wedding, Jerry returned to the hotel in Vienna and purchased the very marble table where he and Silvia had first met. He brought it home, and it became part of the rhythm of their life together. Each morning, they would sit at that same table for their coffee and breakfast; the table where two strangers had once met in Vienna, becoming the table where husband and wife began their days together.

Through all those years, they remained each other’s “Schnecks,” Jerry, Schneck #1, and Silvia, Schneck #2, a little expression of affection that belonged uniquely to the two of them.

Switzerland consequently became far more than another country on Jerry’s long list of travels. It was part of his family, part of his marriage and part of his heart. The many dear friends Jerry and Silvia made in Switzerland over the decades meant the world to him, and those friendships remained among the great treasures of his life.

Together, Jerry and Silvia had two children, Jacques and Anne. Jacques was born in 1977 in Bangkok, Thailand, and Anne in 1981 in Annapolis, Maryland. Their family life crossed countries, languages and cultures, and Jerry and Silvia instilled in their children both an appreciation for the wider world and an understanding that wherever their family was together was home.

For all Jerry accomplished in his life, he always said that his greatest accomplishments were his two children, Jacques and Anne. Of all the places he traveled, positions he held and honors he received, nothing made him prouder than being their father.

Above all the titles Jerry held, Director, diplomat, courier and Senior Foreign Service officer, the title that mattered most at home was simply Papi.

Jerry loved his family.

That family extended across the United States and Europe. He shared a lifelong bond with his brother Danny and sister-in-law Joyce of Austin, Texas; his sister-in-law Nancy, wife of his late brother James, of Las Vegas; his late brother Kelley and late sister-in-law Lynne, and Silvia’s sister, Graziella, in Florence, Italy and her late parents, Rino and Erna Romanelli. His family and lifelong friends in Louisiana remained an enduring part of his life no matter how far around the world his travels took him.

For all the miles Jerry traveled, he was equally happy when he was home creating something with his own two hands.

He had a lifelong passion for woodworking and building; skills rooted perhaps in the practical ingenuity of his Louisiana childhood and later influenced by the craftsmanship and architecture he encountered while living abroad. His years in Thailand particularly inspired him. Among the things he built was the distinctive carport at their family home, incorporating elements inspired by what he had seen while living there.

It was quintessentially Jerry: he could see something halfway around the world, carry the idea home with him, and then figure out how to build it himself with a pad of paper and pencil.

One of his favorite builds was the screened back porch, where he loved to sit whenever a rainstorm rolled through. There was something about the sound of the rain that brought him peace, and he would sit quietly listening as it fell around him.

The night before he passed, an almost otherworldly majestic storm swept through Annapolis, bringing a ferocity of rain the family would never forget. Anne sat beside him, holding his hands as together they listened to the rain, one last storm for a man who had admired them all his life.

Jerry also loved photography, documenting the vast and varied world he encountered throughout his travels. He leaves behind an extensive collection of slides capturing the faces, places and attractions he encountered around the globe. Those images became another way for Jerry to tell his stories, preserving not only where he had been, but the people, details and moments that caught his eye along the way.

He loved people, cultures and conversation, wonderful meals, travel, laughter, a good beer and the pleasure of sitting around a table with the people he loved.

And could he tell a story.

His adventures produced a seemingly inexhaustible supply of tales: diplomatic missions, presidential trips, strange encounters, near misses and personalities from every corner of the world. His humor and infectious laugh could fill a room. Many became family classics, told so often that everyone knew exactly what was coming, and somehow Jerry could still make everyone laugh when he reached the end.

For someone who had seen nearly the entire world, travel was never simply about collecting countries. Jerry wanted to know people. He wanted to taste their food, understand their cultures, hear their stories and experience the places they called home.

His own life became a beautiful contradiction: a boy who began life in an unpainted Louisiana farmhouse without electricity or running water grew into a man whose profession carried him into embassies, presidential missions and capitals across the globe.

And wherever he went, a little bit of Louisiana went with him. His favorite phrase seemed to capture that spirit perfectly: “Laissez les bons temps rouler” - Let the good times roll.

He believed in enjoying life. He loved sharing a wonderful meal, raising a glass with friends, telling a great story, building something with his hands, traveling somewhere new and, most of all, being surrounded by the people he loved. Through it all, he never forgot where he came from or what mattered most.

He leaves behind a world made richer simply because he was in it.

Jerry is lovingly remembered by his wife of 54 years, Silvia; his children, Jacques and Anne; Jacques’s partner, Kara; his brother Dan LaFleur and sister-in-law Joyce of Austin, Texas; his sister-in-law Nancy, wife of his late brother James; and the families of his late brothers James and Kelley.

James’s family includes his sons James and Stephen; James’s wife, Tiffany, and their children, Jamie and Harper, of Richmond, Texas; and Stephen of Las Vegas, Nevada.

Kelley and his late wife, Lynne, are remembered through their family: Lane and Kimberly of Madison, Mississippi, and their children, Kelley and Kyle; Rhett and Michelle, and their children, Rebecca and her husband Josh and their son Eli, Matthew and his wife Leigh Anne, Ashley, and Jamie; and Michelle and her husband Kevin Roberts of Fairfax Station, Virginia, and their children Emma, Philip, Catherine and Madeline.

Jerry is also lovingly remembered by Silvia’s sister, Graziella, in Florence, Italy; his extended family; his beloved family and friends in Louisiana; his treasured friends in Switzerland and around the world; and the countless people whose lives were touched by his friendship, humor, generosity and unforgettable stories.

Jerry was predeceased by his parents, Edwin G. LaFleur and Addelene Kelley LaFleur; his brothers James (2007) and Kelley (2017); and his sister-in-law Lynne (2022).

In accordance with Jerry’s wishes, he was cremated and will ultimately be laid to rest in the LaFleur family burial plot at Cedar Hill Cemetery in Washington, Louisiana, returning at last to the Louisiana soil of his childhood, among the bayous and beneath the cedar trees.

In lieu of flowers, the family welcomes donations in Jerry’s memory to the Beagle Rescue of Southern Maryland, dedicated to rescuing beagles and placing them in loving homes, in honor of Jerry’s deep love for his cherished beagle, Domino, his faithful companion at home.

And when the rain falls and you hear the raindrops against the windows, the roof, or the trees, think of Jerry.