Death
O'Malley's package of reforms made him one of the most innovative and popular members of the government and he was affectionately known as 'the School Man' for his work in the area of education. His sudden death in Limerick on 10 March 1968, before his vision for the education system was completed, came as a great shock to the Irish public. He was buried with a full Irish state funeral.
Following O'Malley's death, his widow, Hilda O'Malley, did not run in the subsequent by election for the seat left vacant by her deceased husband. That by-election was won narrowly by O'Malley's nephew, Desmond O'Malley. However, Hilda O'Malley sought the Fianna Fáil nomination for the 1969 general election but Fianna Fáil gave the party nomination to the now sitting TD, Desmond O'Malley. Hilda O'Malley ran as an Independent candidate in that election and after what proved a bitter campaign against her nephew, she failed to get the fourth seat in Limerick East by just 200 votes.
Read more about this topic: Donogh O'Malley
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“If thee thy brittle beauty so deceives,
Know then the thing that swells thee is thy bane;
For the same beauty doth, in bloody leaves.
The sentence of thy early death contain.”
—Sir Richard Fanshawe (1608–1666)
“There are confessable agonies, sufferings of which one can positively be proud. Of bereavement, of parting, of the sense of sin and the fear of death the poets have eloquently spoken. They command the world’s sympathy. But there are also discreditable anguishes, no less excruciating than the others, but of which the sufferer dare not, cannot speak. The anguish of thwarted desire, for example.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“and so this tree—
Oh, that such our death may be!—
Died in sleep, and felt no pain,
To live in happier form again:
From which, beneath Heaven’s fairest star,
The artist wrought this loved guitar;”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)