PENSACOLA, Florida — Florida’s governor and cabinet have honored late Army Brigadier General Michael (Mike) Lambert Ferguson, a Pensacola native, the for Induction to the Florida Veterans Hall Of Fame.
General Ferguson’s widow Jane now resides in Pittsboro with her daughter Catherine Ferguson.
Ferguson, a well-known Pensacola attorney who died in January at the age of 81, was among the 20 people selected for induction into the Florida Veteran’s Hall of Fame.
A 1960 graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, Ferguson was an Army Ranger and a Vietnam veteran who also served in West Germany and at the Pentagon.
Following his retirement from the Army, Ferguson attended law school at the University of Florida and became part of the McDonald, Fleming, Moorhead and Ferguson law firm.
But even, or perhaps especially, as a civilian, Ferguson was focused on the needs and issues of active-duty military personnel and veterans. He was appointed as a civilian assistant to the Secretary of the Army in 2003, a post he held for more than 12 years. He was very active in supporting the Army’s 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne), which moved to Eglin Air Force Base from Fort Bragg in 2011. And as a former Army Ranger, he also maintained a considerable interest in the 6th Ranger Training battalion, also headquartered on Eglin.
“He was a soldier’s soldier. He was not hung up on rank at all,” retired Army Reserve Brig. Gen. Patt Maney, who succeeded Ferguson as the CASA for northern Florida, said following Ferguson’s death. “He was very focused on helping the Army.”
Maney also was particularly impressed by the level of Ferguson’s investment in helping military personnel and veterans.
“He was all over the place, on his own time and his own dime,” Maney said in January.
Ferguson was nominated for Florida Veterans’ Hall of Fame induction by Tom Rice, a retired Army first sergeant and Fort Walton Beach, Florida, restaurateur who served as Ferguson’s non-commissioned officer during Ferguson’s service as a civilian assistant to the Secretary of the Army.
Like Maney, Rice earlier this year remembered Ferguson as “a soldier’s soldier.”
“He was a role model for me,” Rice said at the time.
Nominations are reviewed each year by the Florida Veterans’ Hall of Fame Council, whose members subsequently forward a report to the governor and Cabinet. Gov. Ron DeSantis and Cabinet officials announced their selection of the latest inductees earlier this week.
Ferguson is one of 20 veterans chosen for induction into the Hall of Fame’s Class of 2020, and is the only posthumous inductee. The time and date for this year’s induction ceremony have not yet been announced.