* Denmark Groover; Helped Change Georgia Flag

Denmark Groover, 78, a former legislator who sponsored a 1956 bill to add the Confederate battle emblem to the Georgia state flag and then endorsed changing the flag this year. Groover, a Democrat who served in the Legislature for four decades, was then-Gov. Marvin Griffin’s floor leader in the House when he sponsored the bill to add the emblem to the flag. Forty-five years later, Groover, a private citizen in failing health, told lawmakers that the state flag should be changed. In January, Georgia legislators shrank the Confederate symbol that had dominated that state’s flag since 1956. “It has become the most divisive issue on the political spectrum and needs to be put to rest,” Groover said earlier this year. Born in Quitman, Ga., Groover was a member of Maj. Gregory “Pappy” Boyington’s “Black Sheep” squadron of Marine fighter pilots who fought in the Solomon Islands during World War II. After the war, Groover graduated from the University of Georgia Law School in 1948. He was elected to the Georgia Legislature in 1953. On April 18 at his home in Macon after a long illness.