Later Years and Death
Oakley continued to set records into her sixties, and she also engaged in extensive, albeit quiet, philanthropy for women's rights and other causes, including the support of specific young women that she knew. She embarked on a comeback and intended to star in a feature-length silent movie. In a 1922 shooting contest in Pinehurst, North Carolina, sixty-two-year-old Oakley hit 100 clay targets in a row from 16 yards (15 m).
In late 1922, Oakley and Butler suffered a debilitating automobile accident that forced her to wear a steel brace on her right leg. Yet after a year and a half of recovery, she again performed and set records in 1924.
Her health declined in 1925 and she died of pernicious anemia in Greenville, Ohio at the age of sixty-six on November 3, 1926. She was buried in Brock Cemetery in Greenville, Ohio. Butler was so grieved by her death that he stopped eating. He died just 18 days later, on November 21, 1926 in Michigan. Butler was buried next to Annie.
After her death, her incomplete autobiography was given to Fred Stone, the stage comedian, and it was discovered that her entire fortune had been spent on her family and her charities.
She was inducted into the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in Fort Worth, Texas.
Read more about this topic: Annie Oakley
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