Personal Life
Rayburn had married once, to Metze Jones (1897–1982), sister of Texas Congressman Marvin Jones and Rayburn's colleague, but the marriage ended quickly. Biographer D.B. Hardeman guessed that Rayburn's work schedule and long bachelorhood, combined with the couple's differing views on alcohol, contributed to the rift. The court's divorce file in Bonham, Texas, has never been located, and Rayburn avoided speaking of his brief marriage. One of his greatest, most painful regrets was that he did not have a son, or as he put it in Master of the Senate, Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon B. Johnson, "a towheaded boy to take fishing."
Rayburn died of pancreatic cancer in 1961 at the age of 79 and was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. By the time of his death, he had served as Speaker for twice as long as any of his predecessors.
Read more about this topic: Sam Rayburn
Famous quotes containing the words personal and/or life:
“I have enjoyed greatly the second blooming that comes when you finish the life of the emotions and of personal relations; and suddenly you find—at the age of fifty, say—that a whole new life has opened before you, filled with things you can think about, study, or read about.... It is as if a fresh sap of ideas and thoughts was rising in you.”
—Agatha Christie (1891–1976)
“The Virgin filled so enormous a space in the life and thought of the time that one stands now helpless before the mass of testimony to her direct action and constant presence in every moment and form of the illusion which men thought they thought their existence.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)