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:
“In the death of my son, now more than two years ago, I seem to have lost a beautiful estate,—no more. I cannot get it nearer to me.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“If I had my life over again I should form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practise, as it were, the remembrance of death. There is no other practice which so intensifies life. Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without an ever- present sense of death life is insipid. You might as well live on the whites of eggs.”
—Muriel Spark (b. 1918)