William Derwood Cann, Jr.

William Derwood Cann Jr. (September 12, 1919 – July 12, 2010), was a World War II lieutenant colonel who subsequently became a college professor, manufacturing executive, and the interim mayor of Monroe in Ouachita Parish in northeastern Louisiana.

Education and military Cann was born on the Esperance Plantation near Monroe, one of five children of William Cann Sr. and the former Lodi DeSeay. He attended Ouachita Parish High School from 1933 to 1937. Thereafter he studied from 1937 to 1938 at the University of Louisiana at Monroe, then known as Ouachita Parish Junior College. In 1938, he enrolled at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, from which he received his bachelor's degree in 1942. At the age of seventeen, Cann joined the Louisiana Army National Guard, in which he became cadet captain.

Business, political, and civic life After his active military service, Cann was an officer in the U.S. Army Reserve. From 1954 to 1956, he was chairman of the Military Department at ULM, by then known as Northeast Louisiana State College. He was also an executive of Bancroft Bag, Inc., in West Monroe. At the time of his death, he was still a senior vice president, director, and shareholder of the company. From 1964 to 1972, Cann served on the Louisiana Board of Commerce and Industry under appointment from Governor John McKeithen. He served on the elected Monroe City School Board from 1968 to 1972. He was appointed mayor in October 1978 and did not contest the special election, won by Robert E. "Bob" Powell, who held the position until his defeat seventeen years later in 1996 by Abe E. Pierce, III, the city's first African American mayor.

Cann was active in the Chamber of Commerce, the Public Affairs Research Council, Bayou DeSiard Country Club, March of Dimes, YMCA, American Red Cross, the United Way, and the Boy Scouts of America. In 1992, he served on the newspaper editorial board of the Monroe News-Star. In 1993, Cann was a Paul Harris Fellow of Rotary International.

One of Cann's sisters, Lodi Cann Kysor (1922-2013), was from 1966 to 1973 a school board member in Ridgefield, Connecticut. She was elected board president in November 1970, the first woman in that role. Cann's time on the Monroe school board overlapped with that of his sister in Connecticut. Lodi Kysor died at the age of ninety-one in Richmond, Virginia, where she had relocated to be near her children.