Later Life
Breese's business was doing well and he decided to buy land in the University Heights area of San Diego, California and have a house built. He also bought a white Thunderbird for his wife, Ila, and a beauty shop named Juniper's Beauty Shop on Juniper Avenue. Still considered a celebrity, Quentin and Ila, hosted many parties at their custom built house and attended many parties at the Mississippi Room at the Imig Manor later known as the Layfeyette Hotel where Hollywood's most glamorous stars came to dine and dance.
Quentin's health became worse over the next ten years. Doctors speculated that his boxing had caused him permanent injuries, and during a party he was hosting at his house in August, 1962, he became ill. An ambulance took him to Mercy Hospital where he died ten days later.
San Diego remembered him by putting flags up and down the sidewalks of Fifth Avenue and inducting him into the San Diego Hall of Champions in Balboa Park.
Ila sold the paint store and went back to work at her beauty shop. She drove herself there every day for thirty-five years in the same white Thunderbird that Quentin had bought for her in the 1960s. She never remarried and she and Quentin never had children. She died in November 2001.
Read more about this topic: Quentin Breese
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