Death and Family
Tolan never married. In 1965, Tolan's kidneys failed, and he was required to undergo weekly dialysis treatments for the rest of his life. In 1967, Tolan died from heart failure at age 58 at Detroit's Mt. Carmel Hospital, while undergoing one of his weekly treatments. At the time of his death, Jesse Owens paid him tribute in Jet magazine:
"When I was in high school, Eddie and Ralph (Metcalfe) were my idols. Eddie and I later became close friends. I used to live in Detroit and every time I'd go back Eddie was one of the first ones I’d look up."
Tolan was survived by his sisters, June Brown and Martha Lombard, and a brother, Hart H. Tolan. Though the two never met, Tolan was also a cousin of former Major League Baseball player Bobby Tolan. Eddie Tolan is interred at United Memorial Gardens in Plymouth, Michigan.
Read more about this topic: Eddie Tolan
Famous quotes containing the words death and/or family:
“There is no such thing as an ugly language. Today I hear every language as if it were the only one, and when I hear of one that is dying, it overwhelms me as though it were the death of the earth.”
—Elias Canetti (b. 1905)
“A poem is like a person. Though it has a family tree, it is important not because of its ancestors but because of its individuality. The poem, like any human being, is something more than its most complete analysis. Like any human being, it gives a sense of unified individuality which no summary of its qualities can reproduce; and at the same time a sense of variety which is beyond satisfactory final analysis.”
—Donald Stauffer (b. 1930)