Our Team

Gerald Blessey,  President / Corporate Counsel

Gerald Blessey is President of Tradition Properties, Inc. He received a B.A. and J.D. from the University of Mississippi and an L.L.M. from Harvard Law School. He is a decorated Vietnam Veteran (Bronze Star, 1st Lt., U.S. Army). He was Mayor of Biloxi from 1981-1989, when he led the Biloxi Waterfront Master Plan of 1985, resulting in the creation of dockside gaming that revived tourism on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. He was a member of the Mississippi House of Representatives from 1971-1981, where he authored the Mississippi Open Meetings Act, the Wetlands Protection Act and the Mississippi Coastal Program for coordination of all agencies to preserve the coastal ecosystem.

In 2005, after Hurricane Katrina, Governor Haley Barbour appointed Blessey to the Governor's Commission on Recovery, Rebuilding and Renewal where he chaired the Land Use Committee and authored the Commission’s recommendation to create the Gulf Coast Renaissance Corporation, a non- profit organization that managed a $55 Million grant for construction of affordable housing. In late August 2008, Blessey was appointed by Governor Barbour to serve as the Mississippi Gulf Coast Housing Director. Governor Barbour also appointed Blessey, who as a student in the 1960s was active in the civil rights movement, to Mississippi’s National Civil Rights Museum Commission.

Blessey is the Founder of the Biloxi Maritime and Seafood Industry Museum and the Old Biloxi Schooner Project, for which he still serves as pro bono counsel. After Katrina, Blessey was named one of South Mississippi's Top 10 Community Leaders by The Journal of South Mississippi Business. Blessey and his wife, Dr. Paige Gutierrez, an anthropologist, have two daughters and live in Biloxi.