Grim Reaper on the Beach

[Beauford]

Florida Lawyer Daniel W Uhlfelder, will today – (Friday 1st May 2020) - launch his “Grim Reaper Beach Tour’ in Walton County to protest the decision by local and state politicians to re-open the beaches to tourists.

Uhlfelder, a Walton county resident, will be dressed as the ‘Grim Reaper’ to patrol the public beaches and advise tourists and locals about the continuing COVID 19 risk they are exposing themselves and others to.

Uhlfelder, who has already sued Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to close the State’s beaches, is also leading efforts to revoke HB631 and make all Florida beaches public in the face of opposition from beach front homeowners including Mike Huckerbee, former Governor of Arkansas and Fox TV pundit.

“Nobody is a bigger advocate of public access to state beaches than me – I love our beaches - it’s one of the reasons I choose to live here. But we must act in a thoughtful and sensible manner. With COVID 19, we still have no reliable data on infection numbers, hardly any testing and a limited amount of health professionals and resources in Walton County to deal with this pandemic” warned Uhlfelder.

“In these circumstances, I can see no rational reason to open our beaches, effectively inviting tens of thousands of tourists back into our community” he continued.

“I fear the worst” said Uhlfelder. “If by dressing up as the ‘Grim Reaper’ and walking our beaches I can make people think and potentially help save a life – that is the right thing to do.”

Uhlfelder will be at the following locations:

Walton County Beaches

Start: 11:00 AM CT

Location: Miramar Beach Regional Access – 49
2375 Scenic Gulf Dr
Miramar Beach, FL 32550
Ed Walline Public Beach Access – 39

Start: 12.00 PM CT

4447 W Scenic Hwy 30A
Santa Rosa Beach, FL 32459
Notes: Lat: 30.34666444 Long: -86.22992065

Santa Clara Regional Beach Access - 17

Start: 1.00 PM CT

3468 E Scenic Hwy 30A
Santa Rosa Beach, FL 32459

Blue Mountain Beach

Start: 5.00 PM CT

726 Blue Mountain Rd
Santa Rosa Beach, FL 32459

Interview request and photography available. Contact Martin Liptrot, 98Republic PR.
Email Martin@98RepublicPR.com or text/call 850 353 1101

 

[bob1]

A man who identified himself as local resident Jay Fields took offense at the entire production. He correctly pointed out that Uhlfelder had well over 10 media types surrounding him as he spoke and that none of them was wearing protective masks or maintaining proper social distance.

“Quit following the guy around,” Fields shouted. “This is ridiculous. It’s propaganda.”

Some who saw the show, like Louisiana native Carl Royer, found it deliciously amusing. Strange stuff born of a strange time.

“I think it’s kind of crazy, myself. A lot of it’s crazy,” Royer muttered. “I’m glad they opened the beach.”

Uhlfelder walked for a short distance across the wet sand of the public beaches, accompanied step for step by microphone-wielding cameramen seemingly intent on capturing any prophetic word he might speak. As he passed families and groups lounging in the sand, people took photos with their phones. One young woman cursed the Grim Reaper.

“You have no life,” she said.

Uhlfelder professed afterward not to have heard much of the negativity spoken around him. He insisted that while his garb might have appeared out of place, even comical, his message was serious.

“We are drawing people from all over the world to our beautiful beaches too soon,” he said. “The problem is when our beaches are open four million people come here, and they come from hot spots and they bring the virus.

 

[Beauford]

Does the Grim Reaper Wear Sunscreen?

Daniel Uhlfelder, an attorney in Santa Rosa Beach, in Florida’s panhandle, was supposed to be on vacation in Spain, with his wife and children, in March. But after the pandemic forced him to cancel his trip he went, on March 5th, to a local Sherwin-Williams store to buy masks. Seeing that the store also sold coveralls for painting in—“They look like hazmat suits,” Uhlfelder said—he grabbed one of those as well. “I bought it out of precaution. I didn’t know how bad the pandemic would get.”

Shortly thereafter, Uhlfelder, who is forty-seven, was distressed to discover that caution wasn’t universal. “There were wall-to-wall spring breakers on the beach,” he said. “I thought, What am I going to do about it?” His schedule was open. First, he put on the paint suit and tried to scare people off the beach. Then he wore the suit and stood in front of Governor Ron DeSantis’s mansion, in Tallahassee, to protest Florida beaches being open; two days later he sought an injunction against DeSantis.

Many state beaches have been closed by counties, but some have begun to reopen this month—too soon, in Uhlfelder’s view. He wanted to step up his game as an activist (in recent years, he has tussled with a neighbor, Mike Huckabee, over Huckabee’s attempt to privatize beach access), so he bought a Grim Reaper costume from Walmart.com. “But it didn’t look like the real Grim Reaper,” he said. He asked a friend to make him a bespoke Reaper getup in black linen. He added a mask, Ray-Bans, and a plastic scythe. Underneath the cloak, he wears a bathing suit and Old Navy flip-flops. “My wife thought it was too much at first,” he said. “She thought it’d be offensive because people are dying.” Florida is, after all, known as God’s Waiting Room. “But, once she heard my message, she was fine with it.”

Angry at DeSantis’s refusal to close Florida’s beaches statewide, and also at his obfuscatory tactics (when Uhlfelder put in a public-records request for “any and all” documents related to the coronavirus, he got a bill for fifty-one thousand dollars), Uhlfelder has spent three days walking along beaches in the panhandle in his Grim Reaper gear. He takes a low-key approach; instead of yelling at crowds sprawling on the sand, he engages in thoughtful conversation with anyone who approaches him. To hecklers, he politely says, “See you soon.”

“I’m not a liberal,” Uhlfelder said, over the phone from his office. (He used to be a Republican. ) “I’m middle of the road; I’m logical.” The most challenging part of his crusade is talking to local businesspeople who are worried about how to feed their children with everything closed. Recently, he asked one such proprietor, “What if the government guaranteed your pay for two or three months if you’d stay home?” The man said that sounded great. “But the government isn’t doing that,” Uhlfelder said. “We’re not subsidizing.” The county he lives in, Walton, draws about four million visitors a year, but doesn’t have the health-care facilities to match. Still, Uhlfelder estimates that fewer than ten per cent of people in the county are wearing masks. “If even one person in New Orleans sees me dressed up and postpones his trip, that’s a win,” he said.

Uhlfelder’s stunt has made him both a publicity magnet and an object of vitriol. “I’m getting mean and nasty calls,” he said. “People are e-mailing me, calling my work number, Facebook-messaging me, tweeting at me.” Some of the messages are anti-Semitic. “Being Jewish in the South isn’t easy,” he said. The responses on Twitter range from “Loved you in ‘Scream’ ” and “Welcome to being Black in public” to “looks like Joe Biden’s campaign,” “The only Corona on that beach has a lime in it,” and “Karen has spoken.”

Uhlfelder recently announced that his Grim Reaper Tour will take him to Jacksonville, Clearwater, and other beaches across Florida that have reopened, where he will surely be a target. “My grandfather escaped Nazi Germany as a teen-ager. His whole family was incinerated in gas chambers,” he said. “It was always ingrained in my head: ‘You can sit around and b**ch and whine, but what are you going to do about it?’ ” He added, “Nobody fights back. That’s why we lose.”

Does he worry that his shtick might frighten children? “I’m not wearing the costume at night,” he pointed out. “And I’m not in Michigan with a gun and a tactical weapon. Those people are scary.” ♦

June 1, 2020, issue, with the headline “Grim.”

 

[Kurt]

The reaper on CNN right now.