Wildwood community leader Samuel Saleem was killed in an accident at 10:38 a.m. Tuesday in Sumter County.
Mayor Ed Wolf said the 70-year-old Saleem will be “impossible to replace.”
Most recently, Saleem, had been chosen to serve on the Citizens Advisory Committee which provides input to the Wildwood City Commission.
“He was a doer and not a talker,” Wolf said. “He has been an important bridge with regard to race relations in Wildwod.”
Saleem had been traveling eastbound on County Road 476 E approaching State Road 471 when his 2014 Nissan Maxima attempted to cross State Road 471 and traveled into the path of a 2015 GMC Sierra 300 driven by Charles F. Anderson, 82, of Lakeland. Anderson suffered serious injuries in the crash.
The impact caused Saleem’s vehicle to overturn along the shoulder and then collide with a fence, according to an accident report from the Florida Highway Patrol.
Saleem was transported to Bayonet Point Regional Medical Center in Hudson where he later died.
He had been born Samuel Wofford Jr. in 1944 and raised in Wildwood.
He joined the Army after a few years in college.
“It was shortly after the 1963 March on Washington and I remember how my family sat around in the living room being so filled with hope by the impact of Dr. King’s famous speech. The Army gave me the opportunity, for the first time in my life, to interact with people of various backgrounds from all over the country,” Saleem wrote on his web page, http://peacemakerone.org/
He moved to New York City and began work as a corporate paralegal. He joined the Nation of Islam in 1975 and changed his name to Samuel Saleem.
He returned to Wildwood in 2006 to assist his aging mother. She died in January 2013.