Death
In July 1994, shortly after her mother’s death, Rudolph was diagnosed with brain tumor. On November 12, 1994, at age 54, she died of cancer in her home in Nashville. At the time of her death, she had four children, eight grandchildren, and many nieces and nephews. Thousands of mourners filled Tennessee State University's Kean Hall on November 17, 1994, for the memorial service in her honor. Others attended the funeral at Clarksville's First Baptist Church. Across Tennessee, the state flag flew at half-mast.
Nine months after Rudolph's death, Tennessee State University, on August 11, 1995, dedicated its new six-story dormitory the "Wilma G. Rudolph Residence Center." A black marble marker was placed on her grave in Clarksville's Foster Memorial Garden Cemetery by the Wilma Rudolph Memorial Commission on November 21, 1995. In 1997, Governor Don Sundquist proclaimed that June 23 be known as "Wilma Rudolph Day" in Tennessee.
Read more about this topic: Wilma Rudolph
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“The day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.”
—Jean Cocteau (1889–1963)
“In taking out an insurance policy one pays for it in dollars and cents, always at liberty to discontinue payments. If, however, woman’s premium is a husband, she pays for it with her name, her privacy, her self-respect, her very life, “until death doth part.””
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“Could any death be so horrible as birth? Or any decrepitude so awful as childhood in a happy united God-fearing family?”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)