BATON ROUGE - A man who played football for the Tigers' first championship-winning team before spending more than 50 years as Ascension Parish's clerk of court has passed away.

The Ascension Parish Clerk of Court's Office announced Tuesday that former clerk Kermit Hart Bourque had died at age 81.

The Gonzales native was "Chinese Bandit" with LSU's national championship team in 1958 before moving on to politics. He was elected to clerk of court in 1964 and held that office until he retired in 2015.