David Wade (June 15, 1911 – May 11, 1990) was a decorated American lieutenant general from three wars who after military retirement on March 1, 1967, served in two appointed positions in the state government of his native Louisiana.

He was reared in the Holly Springs community, known today primarily for a Baptist church and a cemetery located off U.S. Highway 79 between Minden and Homer in Claiborne Parish.

He attended the long since defunct Harris High School and Homer Junior College and procured the Bachelor of Science in engineering from Louisiana Tech University in Ruston in Lincoln Parish.

Then Wade returned to California to become the deputy commander of the 93d Bombardment Wing at Castle Air Force Base near San Francisco.

He remained in Japan until September 1951, when he assumed the command of the 303d Bombardment Wing at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona.

[2] After Wade's military retirement, Governor John McKeithen appointed him in 1967 as the director of the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections, with authority over both state police and prisons.

[1] In 1972, Wade got into an open dispute with Democratic State Representative Dorothy Mae Taylor of New Orleans, the first African-American female to serve in the Louisiana legislature.

He and his wife, Dorothy, donated memorabilia to the Herbert S. Ford Memorial Museum in Homer, Louisiana, which he considered to have been his hometown.