In case you are not properly signed up to link to this story of the passing of an officer and a gentleman:

From the Associated Press
Wednesday, April 13, 2005

PHILADELPHIA

Frederick Clinton Branch, a North Carolina native and the first black man commissioned as an officer in the Marine Corps, has died at a Philadelphia hospital.

Branch, whose wartime service on a merchant ship in the Pacific helped earn him a spot in Officer Candidate School, was 82 when he died on Sunday.

He was made a lieutenant of the U.S. Marine Corps on Nov. 10, 1945, the 170th anniversary of the founding of the Marines.

Branch had previously been rejected for a spot in Officer Training School, and was instead drafted in 1942 while he was a student at Temple University.

He had been striving for a Marine commission after doing well on an OTC admissions test. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt banned racial discrimination in government agencies, he and several other blacks entered the school. Branch was the only black in the graduating class of 250.

He later served at Camp Pendleton, Calif., and Quantico, Va., which named a training building after him.

"I was the CO of an all-white platoon. I went by the book and trained and led them; they responded like Marines do to their superiors," Branch once told the magazine Marines.

He retired from active duty in May 1952 and founded the science department at Dobbins High School in North Philadelphia, where he taught for 35 years.

Branch was born in Hamlet, N.C., and earned a physics degree from Temple in 1947. He and his wife, who died in 2000, had no children.

Branch died at Roxborough Memorial Hospital, a hospital spokesman said.

He is expected to be buried at Quantico with full military honors.

RIP Mr. Branch. A job well done!!!