Gen. Robert H. Barrow, 86, commandant of the Marine Corps from 1979 until 1983, has died.
Barrow, a veteran of World War II and the Korean and Vietnam wars, died in his sleep Thursday at his home in St. Francisville, La., the Marine Corps said in a release Friday. It said a private funeral will be held Monday.
Barrow earned the Bronze Star with Combat “V” leading an American team that served with Chinese guerrillas during the last seven months of World War II, when central China was occupied by Japanese forces.
In Korea, he was awarded the Silver Star and the Navy Cross. Barrow commanded the 9th Marines, 3rd Marine Division in Vietnam.
Barrow was the first Marine to serve a regular four-year tour as a full member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Marine Corps described him as a leader in personnel reform and a commandant who “addressed substance abuse and alcoholism by ending the tolerance of drug abusers and problem drinkers.”
Jacques Piccard, 86, a scientist and underwater explorer who plunged deeper beneath the ocean than any other man, died Saturday, his son’s company said.
Piccard died at his Lake Geneva home in Switzerland, the company Solar Impulse said.
Exploration ran in the Piccard family. Jacques’ physicist father, Auguste, was the first man to take a balloon into the stratosphere, and his son, Bertrand, was the first man to fly a balloon nonstop around the world.
Jacques Piccard helped his father invent the bathyscaphe, a vessel that allows humans to descend to great depths.
On Jan. 23, 1960, he and U.S. Navy Lt. Don Walsh took the vessel into the Pacific’s Mariana Trench and dove to a depth of 35,800 feet — nearly seven miles below sea level. It remains the deepest dive ever carried out.
