Decline
In the late 1980s, Taft was diagnosed with stomach cancer. During his chemotherapy treatments, which left him frail and bald, he presented a series of reports on his health problems. In spite of the hardships, Taft continued to forecast the weather. Even during his last year of life, he continued to present weather reports on the 5pm and 6pm newscasts. One of his colleagues noted that he was so ill that he had to lay down and rest between the two newscasts. His last weather broadcast was August 30, 1991, 41 years and 10 months after his first broadcast, and he died a month later.
A devout Lutheran, Taft had been a regular cornet player at St. John Lutheran Church in Grand Prairie and King of Glory Lutheran Church in Fort Worth. His funeral service had to be moved to St. Stephen's Presbyterian Church, one of Fort Worth's largest churches, to accommodate the crowd of mourners and a live KXAS broadcast. Taft's rival of 15 years, chief weather anchor Troy Dungan of WFAA-TV, attended the service. He is survived by his 2 children from a first marriage, Janice Taft Spooner and Earnest Taft, and several stepchildren from a second marriage.
Taft was posthumously presented the Award for Outstanding Service by a Broadcasting Meteorologist by the American Meteorological Society. He received the award "in recognition of his warmth as a broadcaster and his professionalism as a forecaster."
His widow, Pat, died in 1994, and his first wife Eleanor died in 2004.
Read more about this topic: Harold Taft
Famous quotes containing the word decline:
“I rather think the cinema will die. Look at the energy being exerted to revive it—yesterday it was color, today three dimensions. I don’t give it forty years more. Witness the decline of conversation. Only the Irish have remained incomparable conversationalists, maybe because technical progress has passed them by.”
—Orson Welles (1915–1984)
“The decline of a culture
Mourned by scholars who dream of the ghosts of Greek boys.”
—Stephen Spender (1909–1995)
“The chief misery of the decline of the faculties, and a main cause of the irritability that often goes with it, is evidently the isolation, the lack of customary appreciation and influence, which only the rarest tact and thoughtfulness on the part of others can alleviate.”
—Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)