His Death
In August 1969, Dirksen was found to have an asymptomatic peripherally-located mass in the upper lobe of the right lung, detected on chest x-rays. He entered Walter Reed Army Hospital for surgery, which was undertaken on September 2. A right upper lobectomy was performed successfully for what proved to be a lung cancer (adenocarcinoma). Mr. Dirksen initially did well postoperatively, but thereafter developed progressive complications that eventuated in bronchopneumonia. He suffered a cardiopulmonary arrest and died on September 7, 1969, at age 73.
In 1972, one of the Senate's buildings was renamed the Dirksen Senate Office Building in his honor. The federal courthouse/building of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois is also named for him.
Read more about this topic: Everett Dirksen
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“The dignity to be sought in death is the appreciation by others of what one has been in life,... that proceeds from a life well lived and from the acceptance of one’s own death as a necessary process of nature.... It is also the recognition that the real event taking place at the end of our life is our death, not the attempts to prevent it.”
—Sherwin B. Nuland (b. 1930)
“People named John and Mary never divorce. For better or for worse, in madness and in saneness, they seem bound together for eternity by their rudimentary nomenclature. They may loathe and despise one another, quarrel, weep, and commit mayhem, but they are not free to divorce. Tom, Dick, and Harry can go to Reno on a whim, but nothing short of death can separate John and Mary.”
—John Cheever (1912–1982)