Retired General and former Secretary of State Colin Powell has died at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center of complications from the coronavirus. He was 84, and had been fully vaccinated. He had also been diagnosed with multiple myeloma.
Colin Luther Powell was born on April 5th, 1937, in the New York City neighborhood of Harlem, to Luther Theophilus Powell and the former Maud Arial McKoy, both immigrants from Jamaica. He was raised in the area of South Bronx and graduated from Morris High School in 1954. He graduated from the City College of New York in 1958 with a BS in Geology. He participated in the school's ROTC program including its Pershing Rifles drill team, and after graduation was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army. During his school years, he learned to speak Yiddish while working at a baby furniture store.
Powell underwent basic training at Fort Benning in George, where he found himself dealing with Jim Crow. He served two tours in Vietnam, the first as an advisor to the South Vietnamese Army while a captain, and the second as assistant chief of operations for the 23rd Infantry Division while a major. During that deployment, he survived a helicopter crash and single-handedly pulled three other men from the wreckage. He was given the task of investigating a letter written by a soldier about the My Lai Massacre.
After returning from Vietnam, Powell earned an MBA from George Washington University in 1971. He served White House Fellowship under President Nixon and attended the National War College. He was deployed to South Korea, where he was charged with cracking down on black militants after a race riot had occurred. During the 1980s, Powell served at Fort Carson, Colorado; was a senior military assistant to Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger; commanded the V Corps in Frankfurt, Germany; served as Deputy National Security Advisor and National Security Advisor under President Reagan; served as Commander in Chief, Forces Command; and was selected as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by President Bush the Elder.
During the 1990s, Powell joined the Republican Party and was seen as a possible presidential candidate, but declined to run in 1996 due to a self-admitted lack of passion for politics. He founded the charity America's Promise and the Colin L. Powell Center for Leadership and Service. During 2000, he again declined to run for president. He served as Secretary of State under President Bush the Younger, the first black American to hold that office. After leaving public office, he joined the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins and the board of directors of the company Revolution Health. In 2008, while remaining a Republican, he supported the presidential campaign of then-Senator Barack Obama. He left the Republican Party in response to the January 6th attack on the Capitol building.
Powell is survived by his wife Alma, their son Michael, and their daughters Linda and Annemarie.
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