Robert H. Barrow, 86, a retired four-star general who was a former commandant of the Marine Corps and was decorated for heroism and recognized for reforms, died Oct. 30 at his home in St. Francisville, La. He had heart and circulatory problems.
Barrow served in World War II and the Korean and Vietnam wars, and he received the Silver Star, the Distinguished Service Cross and the Navy Cross — among the highest awards for valor.
Later, as commanding general of the Marine Corps recruit depot at Parris Island, S.C., and as the Marines’ deputy chief of staff for manpower at corps headquarters, Gen. Barrow became known for efforts to raise recruiting standards and reduce training abuses.
“Success in battle is not a function of how many show up but who they are,” he once said. He championed bringing in recruits who had high school diplomas and created screening programs for drill instructors, according to a Marine Corps statement.
“My father believed that people and the quality of people transcends everything else that you do in an organization,” a son, retired Marine Lt. Col. Robert H. Barrow Jr., said.
Marilyn Ferguson was New Age author
BANNING, Calif. — Marilyn Ferguson, whose best-selling book “The Aquarian Conspiracy” helped establish the New Age movement by tying together its disparate threads, has died. She was 70.
Ferguson died Oct. 19 at her home in western Riverside County. She is believed to have died of a heart attack, her son, Eric, told the Los Angeles Times.
“The Aquarian Conspiracy,” published in 1980, was the first comprehensive analysis of the various unconnected efforts — such as scientists investigating biofeedback, midwives running alternative birthing centers and a Christian evangelist promoting meditation — that would coalesce into the New Age movement.
She cast these activities as a cumulative force seeking to break away from mainstream Western attitudes.
“After a dark, violent age, the Piscean, we are entering a millennium of love and light — in the words of the popular song ‘the Age of Aquarius,’ the time of ‘the mind’s true liberation,’” Ferguson wrote in the book.
From Herald wire services
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