Bruce Sundlun, the fiery Rhode Island governor, World War II hero and the owner who gave Middleburg's Salamander Farm its name, has died at 91. Governor Chafee ordered that Rhode Island flags be lowered to half-staff. Sundlun was hospitalized recently for an undisclosed illness.

A highly competitive and successful businessman, Sundlun led a complex personal and combative professional life.

According to the Providence Journal, Sundlun, a Democrat, served two terms as governor, from 1991 to 1995, during one of Rhode Island's deepest recessions and the worst banking collapse in the state's history. He was both praised and vilified for his handling of the crisis — just as admiration for all his accomplishments was always colored by reaction to his formidable ego, his personal style and his succession of romances that led to five marriages and four divorces.

"What lessons would I have for people?" Sundlun said in a Journal interview in January 2010, on the eve of his 90th birthday. "Play it straight. Who, what, where, when, how. Those are the facts of life."

Asked if he had any regrets, Sundlun said: "Not really, that I can think of. I don't have any enemies that I know of. And it wouldn't trouble me if I did."

Born on Jan. 19, 1920, Bruce George Sundlun was the first child of Jan Zelda (Colitz) and Walter Irving Sundlun, whose parents came to the United States from Lithuania. The Sundluns lived on the East Side of Providence. "I think I was the first Jewish kid to ever go to the Gordon School," Sundlun said in a 2006 Journal profile.

Sundlun started in kindergarten and made lifelong friends at Gordon –– but also experienced anti-Semitism.

He remembered competing in a foot race at the end of third grade. "I won hands down," Sundlun said. "It was the first time I ever realized I had any athletic ability or could run fast. And the two guys who came in second threw me down on the ground and called me a dirty Jew."

Gifted with a sharp, analytical mind that would later suit him to the practice of law, Sundlun attended Providence's Classical High School, leaving after junior year for private Tabor Academy in Marion, Mass. He entered Williams College in September 1938, and when Hitler invaded Poland a year later, Sundlun, a sophomore, suspected that America eventually would be drawn into the conflict.

Enlisting in the U.S. Army Air Corps after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, Sundlun trained as a B-17 bomber pilot. He was on his 13th bombing run over Germany on Dec. 1, 1943, when his Flying Fortress, Damn Yankee, was shot down, killing four of its nine-man crew.

Parachuting into Nazi-occupied Belgium, Sundlun evaded capture and connected with the Belgian Underground, eventually joining the Maquis, a branch of the French Resistance that was waging guerrilla war against the Germans near the Swiss border. He was a Jew on the run in a land occupied by Nazis.

"We would play it cool until sometime during the night, then we'd go in and attack [German Army] transport, find their fuel trucks, and shoot 'em up and try and set 'em on fire," Sundlun recalled in the 2006 profile. "The Germans would fight back and there'd be some gunfire, but we'd do more damage to them than they'd do to us 'cause we knew every rock and tree."

Five months after being shot down, Sundlun escaped to safety. The U.S. would later honor him with the Purple Heart, the Distinguished Flying Cross, and an Air Medal with oak leaf cluster. France would bestow the Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur.

Sundlun was a millionaire, with several homes, in Rhode Island, Jamaica and the Washington area — and he was increasingly active in national and Democratic politics, including with President John F. Kennedy, who named Sundlun co-chairman of his 1961 inaugural committee.

He is survived by his wife, Soozie Sundlun; three sons: Tracey Sundlun of San Diego, Stuart Sundlun of Virginia, and Peter and Karen Sundlun of New York City; a daughter: Kara Sundlun House and her husband, Dennis House; two stepchildren: Heather and Ray Conover of Jamestown and Max Dittelman of Tequesta, Fla., four grandchildren and two step-grandchildren.