Death
Eckert was killed on February 12, 2009, in the crash of Colgan Air Flight 3407 outside of Buffalo, New York. She was traveling to Buffalo for a gathering with her family to mark what would have been Rooney's 58th birthday on February 15. A ceremony had also been scheduled at Canisius High School in which she was to award a student with a memorial scholarship in Rooney's honor.
A week before her death, Eckert met with U.S. President Barack Obama, to discuss detainees at Guantanamo and other matters. In a press conference after her death, Obama described her as a "tireless advocate for the families, those whose lives were forever changed on that September day."
On June 18, 2009, Margaux Eckert, executrix of her sister's estate, filed a lawsuit in New Haven, Connecticut, against Colgan Air, Pinnacle Air and Continental Airlines, claiming they were responsible for the crash.
Read more about this topic: Beverly Eckert
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“Cry woe, destruction, ruin, and decay:
The worst is death, and death will have his day.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Some say that gleams of a remoter world
Visit the soul in sleep,—that death is slumber,
And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber
Of those who wake and live.—”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
“We achieve “active” mastery over illness and death by delegating all responsibility for their management to physicians, and by exiling the sick and the dying to hospitals. But hospitals serve the convenience of staff not patients: we cannot be properly ill in a hospital, nor die in one decently; we can do so only among those who love and value us. The result is the institutionalized dehumanization of the ill, characteristic of our age.”
—Thomas Szasz (b. 1920)