He was born in DeSoto Parish as one of ten children to Willie Daniel Harry and Fannie Mims. As a boy, he worked in the fields with the rest of the family on their farm, lived in houses with no running water or electricity, and attended a two-room schoolhouse. The school session began in October and ended in April. "Sometimes we had to be late for school to work on the farm," he recalls. He quit school after "seven or eight years," and came to Shreveport looking for work. He was drafted into the U.S. Army and was sent to basic training in March of 1951 at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. He was then shipped to Korea where he guarded North Korean prisoners of war. After 16 months he returned to the States, left the service as a corporal, and went to work for Flannigan Construction in Shreveport. He later worked at Edinburg Smith until he retired in the early 1980s.