Later Life
Ritter never ran for political office again. He worked for the Office of Economic Opportunity as Director Sargent Shriver's executive assistant during President Lyndon Johnson's administration. After leaving Washington, D.C., Florida Governor Reubin Askew appointed him as secretary of the Florida Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation from 1971–1974. Subsequently, Ritter founded a lobbying firm in Tallahassee. Florida Funeral directors were his first client, but there have been many others, including golf professionals, the swimming pool industry and dry cleaners.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation staged an undercover sting operation in 1981 using a convicted felon who was trying to obtain a state liquor license. Several prominent Jacksonvillians were indicted, including Ritter, who was accused of accepting money illegally. Ritter was acquitted by a federal judge in 1982.
Ritter suffered a heart attack in 2000 and received quadruple bypass surgery which slowed his pace, but only slightly. Prior to his death, he was writing a book about politics in Jacksonville from 1930 through the 1960s. Louis Ritter died at his home in Palm Valley on April 9, 2010 after a battle with cancer. He was 84.
Read more about this topic: Lou Ritter
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“Women generally should be taught that the rough life men must needs lead, in order to be healthy, useful and manly men, would preclude the possibility of a great degree of physical perfection, especially in color. It is not a bad reflection to know that in all probability the human animal has endowments enough without aspiring to be the beauty of all creation as well as the ruler.”
—Caroline Nichols Churchill (1833–?)
“There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live. To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)