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Former Mayor Maurice Ferré, Considered The Father Of Modern-Day Miami, Is Dead

Jose Iglesias
/
Miami Herald
Maurice Ferre at his home on January 10, 2019.

Maurice A. Ferré, the politician and businessman from an aristocratic Puerto Rican family who is widely regarded as the father of modern-day Miami, has died. He was 84.

Ferre, who had been undergoing treatment for an aggressive spinal cancer for two years, died peacefully and surrounded by family on Thursday at his longtime home in South Coconut Grove.

In his 12 often-tumultuous years as Miami mayor, from 1973 to 1985, Ferre set in motion a new vision of Miami -- then a Southern burg struggling with persisting racial segregation, decimated by suburban flight and on the verge of transformation by an unprecedented influx of Cuban refugees — as an urbanized international center.

Read more at our news partner, the Miami Herald

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