Leo R. McLean, a journalist, communications executive, educator, storyteller and devoted husband, father and grandfather, died October 29, 2026, in Houston, Texas. He was 90.

Born August 13, 1936, in Shreveport, Louisiana, Leo was the son of Joseph Clarence McLean and Teresa Hanggi McLean. From his parents, neither of whom had the opportunity to finish high school, he inherited a deep appreciation for family, faith, education, hard work and the opportunities others gave him. Those values guided him throughout his life.

Above all, Leo was devoted to his family. He and his wife, Peggy, shared 63 years of marriage and raised five children. In time his family grew to include 10 grandchildren and 46 nieces and nephews. He took enormous pleasure in being a husband, father, grandfather and uncle.

Leo’s Catholic faith was rooted in his upbringing and strengthened by his Catholic and Jesuit education. It shaped his lifelong commitment to family, education, gratitude and service to others. After settling in the Clear Lake area, Leo became a founding member of St. Bernadette Catholic Church, where he taught youth CCE classes. His faith remained central to him throughout his life.

Leo was endlessly curious. He loved cooking and fishing, tracing his family history, practicing the finer points of mixology, and lively debates about religion and politics. Perhaps his greatest pastime was storytelling, whether written or told around a table. That talent showed each year in his family Christmas letters, which close family and friends eagerly awaited. Part family chronicle, part commentary and unmistakably Leo, the letters captured each year through the eyes of a lifelong writer and became a tradition of their own.

Leo understood from an early age both the value of education and the sacrifices it required. He graduated as valedictorian of St. John’s High School in Shreveport in 1954 and attended Loyola University New Orleans on a full tuition and fees scholarship. His family could not readily afford the cost of living away from home, so an anonymous benefactor paid his expenses during his freshman year. When that support ended, Leo returned to New Orleans two weeks before classes began, determined to find a job or go home. As he later told it, a chance encounter on a New Orleans street led him to The Times-Picayune, where within days he was hired as Loyola’s correspondent at 25 cents per column inch. That job, along with ROTC money and $800 his father borrowed against an insurance policy, kept him at Loyola. Leo never forgot it.

At Loyola, he spent all four years on The Maroon, the student newspaper, serving as editor-in-chief in 1957–58. He graduated cum laude in 1958 with a Bachelor of Science in journalism and later earned an MBA from the University of Houston-Clear Lake.

After graduating, Leo served two years on active duty in the United States Army as a lieutenant with the 308th Counter Intelligence Corps Detachment, including 13 months in Seoul, South Korea.

He returned to The Times-Picayune in 1960 as a general assignment reporter, arriving in time to help cover the desegregation of New Orleans public schools, and later became night city editor. During those years he also taught journalism at Loyola as an adjunct instructor. One lesson he taught would be handed down from teacher to student for generations: journalism was not about the journalist; the journalist was the messenger. He later moved to WWL-TV, where he wrote and produced several award-winning documentaries and eventually held a senior leadership position in the news department.

In 1973, as the oil embargo was beginning, Leo joined Exxon USA’s public affairs staff. His work included speechwriting for the company’s president, corporate contributions and media relations. He helped lead the company’s communications response to major events, including the Exxon Valdez oil spill, a pipeline spill in the Arthur Kill waterway and an explosion at the Baton Rouge refinery. That work helped lead to a company-wide crisis communications training program. Leo took early retirement from Exxon in 1992 and then served three years as executive director of a nonprofit organization in Houston.

Decades after his own scholarship, Leo set out to do for other Loyola students what others had done for him. He helped fund scholarships for mass communication students who might otherwise have been unable to attend, and he supported the university’s effort to digitize The Maroon archives dating to 1923, preserving the newspaper that helped launch his own career. “These are the sort of things that I’m trying to pay back,” he once explained.

When Loyola inducted him into its School of Journalism’s Den of Distinction, Leo looked at the other honorees, whom he called “stars in their profession,” and offered a typically modest view of himself: “I was, truth to tell, more of a workman.” His greatest achievement, he told the audience, was keeping food on the table for his five children until he could get them “out of the house and on their way,” and putting all five through college. Speaking to a new class of graduates, he wished them one thing: that 60 years later, they would have as many reasons to be grateful to Loyola as he did.

Leo is survived by his wife of 63 years, Peggy; his five children, Michael McLean and wife Gina, Chris McLean and wife Kirsten, Leo Robert McLean, Kay Watson and husband Clay, and Mary Littlejohn and husband David; and his 10 grandchildren, Kara, Alison, Quinn, Spencer, Audrey, Blake, Caroline, Rainey, Georgia and Brooks.

He was preceded in death by his parents, Joseph Clarence McLean and Teresa Hanggi McLean, and his sister, Kathryn “Kitty” Roquemore.

For a man who spent his career telling other people’s stories, Leo left quite a story of his own. For him, gratitude was more than something to be expressed. It was something to be repaid, passed along and, ultimately, left behind.

A Wake will be held Monday, November 2, from 6–8 p.m. at Crowder Funeral Home, 111 E. Medical Center Blvd., Webster, TX 77598. A Rosary will be recited, followed by eulogies and remembrances from family and friends.

The Funeral Mass will be celebrated at 10:30 a.m. at St. Bernadette Catholic Church, 15500 El Camino Real, Houston, TX 77062, with a reception to follow.

The final blessing and interment will take place privately at a later date in New Orleans.