Final Years
In May 2004, Dan Fogelberg was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer. He underwent therapy and achieved a partial remission. On August 13, 2005, his 54th birthday, he announced the success of his cancer treatments. He said that he had no immediate plans to return to making music but was keeping his options open. He succumbed to the disease at the age of 56, on December 16, 2007, at his home in Deer Isle, Maine with wife Jean by his side.
His widow announced that a song written and recorded by Fogelberg for her Valentine's Day 2005, "Sometimes a Song", would be sold on the Internet and that all proceeds would go to the Prostate Cancer Foundation. The song was released Valentine's Day 2008 and was also included on a CD released in September 2009 titled Love In Time, a collection of eleven previously unpublished songs.
In tribute to Fogelberg and the entire Fogelberg family, the city of Peoria renamed Abington in the city's East Bluff neighborhood "Fogelberg Parkway". The street runs along the east side of Woodruff High School, Dan's alma mater, and where his father was a teacher and bandleader. "Fogelberg Parkway" ends at the intersection of N. Prospect and Frye, which is the location of the convenience store where Fogelberg ran into his old high school sweetheart one Christmas Eve---a chance encounter made famous in the song "Same Old Lang Syne"
In the fall of 2009, the Peoria City Council granted permission to a group of Dan Fogelberg fans to begin fund-raising efforts to create a permanent memorial. The memorial garden, placed in Riverfront Park, was dedicated in a ceremony held on August 28, 2010.
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Famous quotes containing the words final and/or years:
“The self-explorer, whether he wants to or not, becomes the explorer of everything else. He learns to see himself, but suddenly, provided he was honest, all the rest appears, and it is as rich as he was, and, as a final crowning, richer.”
—Elias Canetti (b. 1905)
“It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear, that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)