Death
Roosevelt was injured in April 1960 when she was struck by a car in New York City. Afterwards, her health began a rapid decline. Subsequently diagnosed with aplastic anemia, she developed bone marrow tuberculosis subsequent to having been treated with cortisone which reactivated the dormant tuberculosis that she had contracted years earlier. Roosevelt died at her Manhattan home on November 7, 1962 at 6:15 p.m., at the age of 78. President Kennedy ordered the lowering of flags to half-staff in her memory. UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson said, "The United States, the United Nations, the world, has lost one of its great citizens. Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt is dead, and a cherished friend of all mankind is gone."
Her funeral at Hyde Park was attended by President John F. Kennedy and former Presidents Truman and Eisenhower. At her memorial service, Stevenson asked, "What other single human being has touched and transformed the existence of so many?" He further praised Roosevelt by stating, "She would rather light a candle than curse the darkness, and her glow has warmed the world." She was buried next to Franklin at the family compound in Hyde Park, New York on November 10, 1962.
Read more about this topic: Eleanor Roosevelt
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows for the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“if thou slip thy troth and do not come at all.
As minutes in the clock do strike so call for death I shall:
To please both thy false heart, and rid myself from woe,
That rather had to die in troth than live forsaken so.”
—Unknown. The Lady Prayeth the Return of Her Lover Abiding on the Seas (l. 19–22)
“He should be as vigorous as a sugar maple, with sap enough to maintain his own verdure,... and not like a vine, which being cut in the spring bears no fruit, but bleeds to death in the endeavor to heal its wounds.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)