- Randy Christmas
Randy Christmas (born Randall Norton Christmas on
14 October 1920 inOcilla, Georgia -27 July 1969 at North Shore Hospital inMiami ,Florida ) was theMayor of the City of Miami from 1955 - 1957. He had served previously on the City of Miami Commission from 1953 - 1955.In 1926 the Christmas family relocated to Miami. The sixth of seven siblings, Randall grew to manhood in the Liberty City neighborhood and began working as a young boy delivering the Miami Herald. He attended Liberty City Elementary and Middle Schools, as well as Little River Edison High School where he graduated in 1938. Christmas served with the
US Marine Corps VMB443 as a B-25 bomber in the Pacific Theater duringWorld War II where he met and became acquainted with George Smathers, later to become an influential Senator from the state of Florida. In 1951, Randall graduated from theUniversity of Miami School of Law . Christmas served in a time of tremendous change and phenomenal growth for Miami highlighted by the creation and transition to Miami-Dade, a municipal entity encorporating the whole of Miami proper with several of the smaller municipalities in the wider metro area. Christmas was the first mayor to serve from what are still the current offices of the City of Miami municipal government. He can be seen on camera from these offices in the film Miami Expose (1956) in which he introduces the movie to audiences. Christmas later served as an Assistant States Attorney from 1960 - 1964, afterwards continuing in private practice til his death.He is buried at Southern Memorial Cemetery in
North Miami Beach , Florida.References
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