FIFTY50 THE WASHINGTON INFORMER CELEBRATES Fifty Years of News Excellence; 50 Years of Service
Inside Remembering Marion Barry; Health Supplement •
C e l e b r a t i n g 5 0 Ye a r s o f S e r v i c e
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Serving More Than 50,000 African American Readers Throughout The Metropolitan Area / Vol. 50, No.9 Dec 11 - Dec 17, 2014
Marion S. Barry during his final ride through Ward 8 in Southeast. His casket, on a horse-drawn caisson, was taken to the Temple of Praise in Southeast for a memorial service attended by hundreds of friends and loved ones. /Photo by Shevry Lassiter
Barry Remembered, Praised at Funeral Service Thousands Pay Their Last Respects By Barrington M. Salmon WI Staff Writer@bsalmondc It’s almost expected, and often commonplace that someone who spent a half-century in
politics and immersed in public service would have amassed a sizeable fortune. But not Marion Barry. His wife, and others who knew him, mentioned at various times during three days of official funeral ceremonies that Barry, four-time mayor and the District’s dominant political fig-
ure, left no real money to speak of when he died on Nov. 23. That fact speaks to Barry’s generosity and his willingness to give the shirt off his back to help those in need, they said. “When Gandhi died, he left 16 cents. Martin Luther King left $300 and Marion Barry didn’t leave anything,” said The
Rev. Dr. Willie Wilson, senior pastor of Union Temple Baptist Church in Southeast. Barry’s widow Cora Masters Barry had mourners at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center laughing at her recollections about her husband’s penchant for charity. “I didn’t allow him to go to
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the gas station anymore because he would give away all his money, not on gas but on people asking him for money,” she said as the funeral service drew to a close. “And I stopped letting him go to the grocery store because we’d never leave. It was ‘How
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