Former House Insurance Chairman John Cosgrove, from Miami, died in late April after undergoing an emergency appendectomy while vacationing in Africa. The Miami Herald reported Cosgrove was visiting Zimbabwe with one of his daughters when he began having abdominal pain and was taken to the nearest medical facility, family friends said.
"After the surgery, he was in serious condition and Gov. Jeb Bush's office was helping arrange for him to be taken to a South Africa facility to get better medical treatment. He died before he could be moved. He was 56," The Herald reported.
Florida insurance leaders remember Cosgrove for legislation that helped save Florida's property insurance industry following Hurricane Andrew's devastation in 1992 -- particularly the creation of the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund and establishment of the predecessor to today's Citizens Property Insurance Corporation. He was remembered by officials at the Florida Association of Insurance Agents for his help in protecting agents while designing depopulation statutes for the old Florida Residential Property & Casualty Joint Underwriting Association.
Serving nearly two decades as a state legislator, Cosgrove was elected to both the state House and Senate. He later ran unsuccessfully for insurance commissioner. He had been serving as mayor of Cutler Bay, a new town in South Florida he helped found.
