Death
Gipp died December 14, 1920, two weeks after being elected Notre Dame's first All-American by Walter Camp and second consensus All-American overall. A frequently told but probably apocryphal story of Gipp's death begins when he returned to Notre Dame's campus after curfew from a night out. Unable to gain entrance to his residence, Gipp went to the rear door of Washington Hall, the campus' theatre building. He was a steward for the building and knew the rear door was often unlocked. He usually spent such nights in the hall. On that night, however, the door was locked, and Gipp was forced to sleep outside. By the morning, he had contracted pneumonia and eventually died from a related infection.
It is more likely that Gipp contracted strep throat and pneumonia while giving punting lessons after his final game, November 20 against Northwestern University. Since antibiotics were not yet available in the 1920s, treatment options for such infections were limited and they could be fatal even to young, healthy individuals.
Gipp's hometown, Laurium, built a memorial in his honor; he is buried in nearby Lake View Cemetery in Calumet, Michigan.
Read more about this topic: George Gipp
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“The death of Satan was a tragedy
For the imagination.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“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)
“Time turns the old days to derision,
Our loves into corpses or wives;
And marriage and death and division
Make barren our lives.”
—A.C. (Algernon Charles)