Brothers To The End
The fortunes of the Vans rose in the 1920s. By 1929, their holdings were valued at $3 billion, mostly as a result of the high valuation of stocks on the New York Stock Exchange. Their house of cards tumbled when the Great Depression began, causing the Van Sweringen companies to falter in the 1930s. While Shaker Heights rose to join the ranks of Beverly Hills and Wellesley, Massachusetts, the rail empire suffered financial difficulties. Loans were foreclosed upon and assets were sold to meet interest payments for their debts.
M.J. Van Sweringen's health began to decline in 1934, and he died on December 12, 1934. O.P. Van Sweringen was quoted as saying: "I don’t know what to do, or how to do it, or where to go from here." O.P. died on board a train near Hoboken of coronary thrombosis on November 22, 1936. At the time of his death, O.P. was worth less than $3,000.
The brothers are buried together in Cleveland's Lakeview Cemetery under a tombstone that reads: "Brothers".
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Famous quotes containing the words the end and/or brothers:
“This might be the end of the world. If Joe lost we were back in slavery and beyond help. It would all be true, the accusations that we were lower types of human beings. Only a little higher than apes. True that we were stupid and ugly and lazy and dirty and, unlucky and worst of all, that God Himself hated us and ordained us to be hewers of wood and drawers of water, forever and ever, world without end.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“It always seems to the brothers and the father that their brother or son didn’t marry the right person.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)