PLAQUEMINE — The Iberville Parish Sheriff’s Office (IPSO) is mourning the loss of one of their own. Deputy Harry “Gil” Banta, who has been with the department for more than 30 years, died on Jan. 21. The entire time he worked for the sheriff’s department, he was in a wheelchair, but he didn’t let that hold him back.
“He participated in everything. He helped with benefits, cooking, the St. Jude car show, he was part of everything,” Iberville Sheriff Brett Stassi told UWK. “He tried to help people whenever he could. If somebody had cancer, he’d be over there trying to help cook the jambalaya to give them. He really tried to live a full life, even though he was in the chair.”
Sheriff Stassi told UWK that Banta died from medical complications earlier this week. He was 62-years-old.
“It never stopped him”
Stassi explained that Banta was in a crash when he was younger, and has been in a wheelchair ever since. “There was an accident that happened early on when he was young that paralyzed him from the waist down,” he said. “I don’t exactly know how old he was when it happened, but he had been in the chair a long time. In law enforcement, it never stopped him from giving back to the community. It never stopped him in his life.”
While he never let his chair hold him back, in some instances it did make some jobs at IPSO more difficult, but the department found work arounds that benefited everyone. “Some of the things that held him up in the chair were the 12-hour shifts at the jail. They were long,” the sheriff said. “I was able to move him to eight-hour shifts. It extended his law enforcement career because he could handle those eight-hour shifts in the chair better than the twelves.”
“If we had a retirement party or something at the office, he would always be scheduled to be here, and want to be here,” Sheriff Stassi said. “He’d throw his own wheelchair in the back seat, come in to Plaquemine, unload the wheelchair, get out, and roll in here. He never let it slow him down.”
Three decades of service
Banta was with IPSO for 30 years and eight months and held different positions while he was there. Most recently, he was a communications deputy in Maringouin. “He was assigned to the main substation,” Stassi said. “He worked for me in the office, and handled the public as well. People who came in to pay taxes, and he took care of substation on the north end.”
He also spent time working at Brusly High School as a resource officer, and always volunteered to help at benefits around the community. “He would be the one cooking, he and his group of friends,” Stassi said. “Someone would need 1,000 plates because someone had cancer. They would make the calls, get the stuff donated, and be the ones out there cooking. They’d start at four o’clock in the morning and have it ready for lunch. He just constantly was giving back to the community.”
Outside of work, Stassi says Banta was passionate about hunting. “Whenever he was invited to a wheelchair hunt, he was there and he killed deer.”
Services
Visitation will be held at St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church in Plaquemine on Tuesday, January 27 from 9 a.m. until Mass of Christian Burial at 12 p.m., celebrated by Father Martin Lawrence. Entombment will follow at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in Brusly.
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