Harry Didion; Protector of World Leaders

Harry Didion, the retired Los Angeles Police Department captain charged with protecting many world leaders when they visited this city, has died in Marina del Rey of leukemia. He was 75 and served with the department from 1936 until his retirement in 1972.

Didion was with the department’s robbery detail in 1953 when he was named head of the bunko and fugitive squad with ancillary duties as head of security for visiting dignitaries.

Until 1963, when he was put in charge of the Venice division, he protected the welfare and catered to the eccentricities of such international personalities as Nikita S. Khrushchev, Haile Selassie, Golda Meir, Syngman Rhee and the kings and queens of Belgium and Greece.

Although the late chief William S. Parker assumed personal responsibility for Khrushchev’s 1959 visit to Los Angeles, it was Didion who was charged with preparing the 750-page book that mapped and diagrammed every route and building the Soviet leader was to visit.

No Major Trouble

Khrushchev left town unscathed, with only a few tomatoes thrown at his car as it entered a film studio.

Over the years Didion had to delay a meeting because West Germany’s Konrad Adenauer had lost his hat and had sent for a replacement; improvised security when President Sukarno of Indonesia decided to make an unscheduled stop for ice cream at a Will Wrights parlor, and encouraged Rhee to cut short a reception line because the Korean leader’s wife had whispered to the policeman that “my feet hurt.”

The burly Didion came to Los Angeles from his native Ohio when he was 4 and graduated from UCLA with a degree in history. That Depression-era degree didn’t offer immediate employment and he took work at a tire company before joining the police force.

Film Technical Adviser

By 1948 he was working the robbery detail and serving as a technical adviser on the film “He Walked by Night,” in which Jack Webb had a subordinate role. Didion said he gave Webb one of the first plot lines for his “Dragnet” radio series and continued to serve as an adviser when the shows later moved to television.

Didion, who died Saturday, is survived by his wife, Geraldine, a son, Los Angeles Police Detective Harry E. Didion, and a daughter, Marilynn Kroeker. Five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren also survive.