George Firestone, American politician, Secretary of State of Florida (1978–1987), died from Alzheimer's disease he was 80

George Firestone was an American politician from the U.S. state of Florida  died from Alzheimer's disease he was 80. He was a Democrat. He served as the 20th Florida Secretary of State from 1979 to 1987.

(May 13, 1931 – March 2, 2012)  

Firestone was born in New York City in 1931. He moved to Miami, Florida with his family as a child in 1936. Firestone served in the United States Army and was honorably discharged in 1952. He became a Miami business leader and served in many civic organizations.

Firestone was elected to the Florida House of Representatives from Dade and Monroe counties in 1966. He was elected to the Florida Senate in 1972, where he would serve until 1978.^[1] He was elected Secretary of State of Florida in 1978 and was reelected twice, serving until he resigned in 1987.^[2]

He used the Secretary of State's position as chief cultural officer to promoted the arts, and during his term Florida seal to include the sabal palm.^[1] During his tenure, he also traveled a great deal to promote foreign investment in Florida, and was a supporter for Free Trade Zones in the state.^[1]

support for the arts increased more than 3,200 percent. He also helped update the

Later in life, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. On March 2, 2012, he died in a Hollywood, Florida assisted living facility at the age of 80.^[1]

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Van T. Barfoot, American soldier, Medal of Honor recipient, died from head injuries from a fall he was 92

Van Thomas Barfoot (born Van Thurman Barfoot;  was a United States Army officer and a recipient of the United States military's highest decoration—the Medal of Honor—for his actions in World War II died from head injuries from a fall he was 92.

(June 15, 1919 – March 2, 2012) 

Barfoot was born on June 15, 1919, in Edinburg, Mississippi.^[4] His grandmother was Choctaw, but Barfoot himself was not an official member of the Choctaw Nation; although he was eligible, his parents had never enrolled him.^[5]

After enlisting in the Army from Carthage, Mississippi, in 1940  1st Infantry Division in Louisiana and Puerto Rico. In December 1941, he was promoted to sergeant and reassigned to the Headquarters Amphibious Force Atlantic Fleet in Quantico, Virginia, where he served until the unit was deactivated in 1943. He next joined the 157th Infantry Regiment, 45th Infantry Division, and was shipped to Europe.^[5]

and completing his training, Barfoot served with the

During the Italian Campaign Barfoot participated in a series of amphibious landings: the Allied invasion of Sicily in July 1943, the invasion of mainland Italy at Salerno in September 1943, and finally the landings at Anzio in late January 1944. His unit pushed inland from Anzio, and by May 1944 had reached the small town of Carano in northeastern Italy, near Austria. They set up defensive positions and Barfoot conducted patrols to scout the German lines. When his company was ordered to attack on the morning of 23 May 1944, Barfoot, now a technical sergeant, asked for permission to lead a squad. Because of the patrols he had made, he knew the terrain and the minefield which lay in front of the German position. He advanced alone through the minefield, following ditches and depressions, until he came within a few yards of a machine gun nest on the German flank. After taking out the gun and its crew with a hand grenade, he entered the German trench and advanced on a second machine gun, killing two soldiers and capturing three others. When he reached a third machinegun, the entire crew surrendered to him. Others also surrendered, and Barfoot captured a total of seventeen German soldiers and killed eight.^[5]

When the Germans launched an armored counterattack with three Tiger tanks directly against his positions later that day, Barfoot disabled the lead tank with a bazooka, killed part of its crew with his Thompson submachine gun, and turned the German attack. He then advanced into enemy-held territory and destroyed an abandoned German artillery piece. He returned to his own lines and helped two wounded soldiers from his squad to the rear.^[5]

Van Thomas Barfoot newly promoted US Army Lieutenant circa 1944.

Barfoot was subsequently commissioned as a second lieutenant. His division moved into France, and by September 1944 was serving in the Rhone valley. Lt. Barfoot learned he would be awarded the Medal of Honor and chose to have the presentation ceremony in the field, so that his soldiers could attend. He was formally presented with the medal on September 28, 1944, in Épinal, France, by Lieutenant General Alexander Patch.^[5]

Having grown up in the strictly segregated south, Barfoot was noted for a comment he made in 1945 regarding African-Americans. Mississippi senator and Ku Klux Klan member Theodore G. Bilbo asked Barfoot if he had much trouble with the African-American soldiers he had served with during the war. To Bilbo's embarrassment, Barfoot responded, "I found out after I did some fighting in this war that the colored boys fight just as good as the white boys...I've changed my idea a lot about colored people since I got into this war and so have a lot of other boys from the south".^[6]

Barfoot later served in the Korean War and the Vietnam War, and earned a Purple Heart. He reached the rank of colonelbefore retiring from the Army.^[7] In retirement, he lived on a farm in Amelia County, Virginia and later moved to, Henrico County, Virginia, near his daughter. On October 9, 2009, the portion of Mississippi Highway 16 which runs from Carthage through his hometown of Edinburg to the border between Leake and Neshoba counties was named the "Van T. Barfoot Medal of Honor Highway".^[8] A building at McGuire Veterans Hospital in Richmond, VA also carries his name.

Barfoot suffered a skull fracture and bleeding in the brain from a fall two days earlier in front of his home, and died on March 2, 2012 at the age of 92
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Lawrence Anthony, South African conservationist and environmentalist, died from a heart attack he was 61

Lawrence Anthony  was an international conservationist, environmentalist, explorer and bestselling author died from a heart attack he was 61. He was the long-standing head of conservation at the Thula Thula game reserve in Zululand, South Africa, and the Founder of The Earth Organization, a privately registered, independent, international conservation and environmental group with a strong scientific orientation. He was an international member of the esteemed Explorers Club of New York and a member of the National Council of the Southern Africa Association for the Advancement of Science, South Africa’s oldest scientific association.

(17 September 1950 – 2 March 2012)

 

Anthony had a reputation for bold conservation initiatives, including the rescue of the Baghdad Zoo at the height of the US-led Coalition invasion of Iraq in 2003, and negotiations with the infamous Lord's Resistance Army rebel army in Southern Sudan, to raise awareness of the environment and protect endangered species, including the last of the Northern White Rhinoceros.

Details of his conservation activities appeared regularly in regional and international media including CNN, CBS, BBC, Al Jazeera and Sky TV and featured in magazines and journals such as Readers Digest, the Smithsonian, the Explorers Journal, Africa Geographic, Men's Journal, Shape magazine, Elle magazine and others.

Anthony died of a heart attack at the age of 61 before his planned March 2012 conservation gala dinner in Durban to raise international awareness for the rhino-poaching crisis and to launch his new book, The Last Rhinos: My Battle to Save One of the World's Greatest Creatures.^[2] Following his death, there were reports that some of the elephants he worked to save came to his family's home in accordance with the way elephants usually mourn the death of one of their own.^[3]

Anthony was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. In the 1920s, his grandfather, who was a miner in Berwick-upon-Tweed, England had migrated to the area to work in the gold mines. His father, who ran an insurance business, went about establishing new offices across Southern Africa; Anthony was raised in rural Rhodesia (now called Zimbabwe), Zambia, and Malawi, before settling in Zululand, South Africa.^[4]

Following his father, Anthony also started his career in the insurance sector, though subsequently started working the real estate development business. Meanwhile, he started working with Zulu tribespeople, by mid-1990s, his passion for the African Bush inspired him to switch careers, when he bought the Thula Thula game reserve, spread over 5,000-acre in KwaZulu-Natalstarting his career as a conservationist.^[4] A turning point in career came when he was called by a conservation group to rescue a group of nine elephants who had escaped their enclosure and were wreaking havoc across KwaZulu-Natal, and were about to be shot. He tried to communicate with the matriarch of the herd through the tone of his voice and body language, eventually rescued them and brought to the reserve, and in time came to be known as "Elephant-whisperer".^[1][4]

In the following years, he established a conservation group, The Earth Organization in 2003, and his efforts lead to the establishment of two new reserves, the Royal Zulu Biosphere in Zululand and the Mayibuye Game Reserve in Kwa Ximba, aimed at providing local tribe people income through wildlife tourism.^[4]

Anthony was married to Francoise Malby and lived on the Thula Thula game reserve in Zululand. He has two sons (Dylan and Jason) and two grandsons.

After his death, a group of wild elephants which he had helped rescue and rehabilitate walked up to his home on their own, and stood around in an apparent vigil for two days, before dispersing.^[5]

In April, 2012, he was posthumously awarded honorary Doctor of Science degree by College of Agriculture, Engineering and Science, University of KwaZulu-Natal.^[5]

^{Baghdad Zoo was the biggest zoo in the Middle East; however, by 8 days after the 2003 invasion, when Anthony reached the zoo on a private rescue initiative, out of the original 700 animals in the Baghdad Zoo only 35 survived owing to bombing of the zoo, looting of the animals for food, and starvation of the caged animals without food and water.[6] Anthony could not get to the zoo any earlier at the height of the war owing to safety, transport and bureaucracy issues.[6] The animals that survived tended to be the larger animals, including bears, hyenas, lions and tigers.[6] In the chaos of the war, Anthony used mercenaries to help protect the zoo, and looked after the animals with the help of some of the zookeepers, feeding the carnivores by buying donkeys on the streets of Baghdad. US Army soldiers, Iraqi civilians and various other volunteers including former Republican Guard soldiers came to assist. Eventually L. Paul Bremer, then head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, supported the zoo and American engineers helped to reopen it.[6] Anthony wrote a book about the wartime rescue of the Baghdad Zoo,[7] and the movie rights have been acquired by a major Hollywood production company.}

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Randy Primas, American politician, Mayor of Camden, New Jersey (1981–1990), died from bone marrow cancer he was 62

Melvin Randolph "Randy" Primas, Jr.  was an American politician who served as the first African-American Mayor of Camden, New Jersey from 1981 to 1990 died from bone marrow cancer he was 62.^[2][3]

^{(August 31, 1949 – March 1, 2012)}

^{Primas was raised in Camden, New Jersey as a member of one of the city's most prominent families.[3] He earned a bachelor's degree from Howard University in Washington, D.C., in 1971.[2] Primas then joined the Black People's Unity Movement when he returned to Camden.[2] Before becoming mayor, Primas was the Vice President of Burger King Entities, an economic-development program sponsored by the Black People's Unity Movement.[3]}

Primas was elected to the Camden City Council when he was just 23 years old, quickly rising to become the council's president.^[2][3] In the early 1980s, Camden Mayor Angelo Errichetti was indicted by U.S. federal authorities in the wake of the Abscam scandal^[3] and Primas subsequently won the 1981 mayoral election, becoming the first African-American mayor in the city's history.^[3] He was 31 years old at the time of his election.^[3]

Primas would be elected to three consecutive terms in the mayor's office, serving until 1990.^[2][3] However, his support for several urban renewal projects, including the construction of the now demolished Riverfront State Prison, earned him criticism from some community leaders and residents.^[3] Primas left office in 1990 when New Jersey Governor Jim Florio appointed to him as the Commissioner on the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs, succeeding Anthony M. Villane.^[2][4]

He served as a trustee for Rowan University from 1993 to 1999.^[3] Primas worked as an executive for Commerce Capital Markets, which was part of Commerce Bank at the time, during the early 2000.^[3]

In 2002, Primas was appointed the first chief operating officer (COO) of Camden by the state government, shortly before New Jersey took control of the city.^[2][3] He retired from the post in 2006 following a public dispute with Community Affairs Commissioner Susan Bass Levin over a memorandum of understanding which Primas had refused to sign.^[2][3]

Primas moved to Fort Mill, South Carolina, following his retirement.^[2] He was later diagnosed with bone-marrow cancer and died at a hospital in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, on March 1, 2012, at the age of 62.^[2] He was survived by his wife, Bonita, and two sons, Melvin Primas III and Craig Primas.^[3] Primas' funeral, which was held at the St. John Baptist Church in East Camden, was attended by numerous Camden and New Jersey political dignitaries, including Camden Mayor Dana Redd, former Mayor Gwendolyn Faison, U.S. Rep. Rob Andrews, Former Governor Jim Florio, state Senator Donald Norcross, and state Assemblyman Gilbert "Whip" Wilson.^[2] Camden Mayor Redd ordered all municipal flags to fly at half staff.^[3]

  

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