Reubin O'Donovan Askew (born September 11, 1928) is an American politician, who served as the 37th Governor of the U.S. state of Florida from 1971 to 1979.

Askew was born in Muskogee, Oklahoma, one of the six children of Leon G. Askew and Alberta Askew. His parents divorced, and in 1937, he and his mother moved to Pensacola, Florida. Askew was a member of Escambia Chapter Order of DeMolay in Pensacola. He was initiated in 1944. Askew graduated from Pensacola High School in 1946.

Later that year, he entered the Army as a paratrooper and in 1948 was discharged in the rank of Sergeant. Askew attended Florida State University, at which he was a brother of Delta Tau Delta and Alpha Phi Omega. At FSU, Askew served as Student Body President. He later attended law school at the University of Florida Levin College of Law. He served in the Air Force from 1951 to 1953, as an military intelligence officer, overseeing airplane reconnaissance photographs of Western Europe, though he felt uncomfortable with this task as it violated existing treaties.

Anita Jane Bryant (born March 25, 1940) is an American singer, former Miss Oklahoma beauty pageant winner, and outspoken critic of homosexuality. She scored four Top 40 hits in the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s, including "Paper Roses", which reached #5. She later became widely known for her strong views against homosexuality and for her prominent campaigning in 1977 to repeal a local ordinance in Dade County, Florida, that prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, an involvement that significantly damaged her popularity and career.

Bryant was born in Barnsdall, Oklahoma. After her parents divorced, her father went into the U.S. Army and her mother went to work, taking her children to live with their grandparents temporarily. When Bryant was two years old, her grandfather taught her to sing "Jesus Loves Me". She was singing at the age of six onstage on local fairgrounds in Oklahoma. She sang occasionally on radio and television, and was invited to audition when Arthur Godfrey's talent show came to town.

William Calhoun "Bill" Baggs was editor of The Miami News from 1957 until his death in 1969. Bill Baggs was one of a group of Southern editors who campaigned for civil rights for African-Americans in the 1950s and 1960s. Others in this group included Ralph McGill at The Atlanta Constitution, Hodding Carter at the Greenville Delta Democrat-Times and Harry Ashmore at the Arkansas Gazette. Baggs became an early opponent of the Vietnam War. In 1967 and 1968 Bill Baggs traveled to North Vietnam with Harry Ashmore on a private peace mission. While there, they interviewed Ho Chi Minh about what conditions would be necessary to end the war. Unknown at the time, Bill Baggs was also one of the journalists involved in the CIA's Operation Mockingbird particularly during the latter stages of The McCarthy Era which he opposed very firmly and convincingly as a reporter. He joined philosophically with both Allen Dulles and Frank Wisner of the C.I.A. at Operation Mockingbird in supporting and defending Cord Meyer when Senator McCarthy began to target the C.I.A., which he claimed harbored more than 100 closeted Communists which turned out to be a gross distortion of the facts. Bill Baggs was a very active anti-Communist himself, publishing numerous anti-Castro articles during the very early days of the Castro regime in Cuba beginning in 1959. Baggs cultivated numerous news sources from within the anti-Castro Soldier-of-Fortune community in South Florida including Gerry Patrick Hemming, Roy Hargraves, Eddie Collins and William Whatley as well as Alex Rorke and several others. He also worked with eventual Watergate burglars Frank Sturgis and Bernard Barker to develop news leads and sources about the South Florida anti-Castro exile community long before they were involved with Watergate.

Pat Frank (May 5, 1907 – October 12, 1964) is the pen name of the American writer, newspaperman, and government consultant Harry Hart Frank. Frank's best known work is the 1959 post-apocalyptic novel Alas, Babylon. His other books include Mr. Adam, Hold Back the Night and Forbidden Area.

Frank was born in Chicago in 1907. Frank spent many years as a journalist and information handler for several newspapers, agencies, and government bureaus. During his early career, he lived mainly in New York and Washington (and service overseas during World War II, when he worked for the Office of War Information and was a correspondent in Italy, Austria, Germany, and Turkey). He died on October 12, 1964 in Jacksonville, Florida, age 57, of acute pancreatitis.

Nearly all men are sterile in Mr. Adam (1946), Frank's first published work. His other novels include Hold Back the Night, An Affair of State, and Forbidden Area. Frank's experiences reporting on the Korean War are described in his autobiographical travelogue The Long Way Round and influenced Hold Back the Night.