Kate Smith - Death

Death

Kate Smith was impaired by diabetes and her weight problem during her last years, and eventually used a wheelchair. She died in Raleigh on June 17, 1986 at the age of 79. For over a year following her death, her remains were stored in a vault at Saint Agnes Cemetery in Lake Placid, while officials of St. Agnes Roman Catholic Church and the singer's executors disputed the meaning of a clause in her will.

The clause expressed Miss Smith's desire to be interred in the St. Agnes graveyard in a hermetically sealed bronze casket in a mausoleum sufficient to contain my remains alone. This request was reportedly made because Kate Smith had an obsessive fear of being underground. The church, however, despite earlier requests by other parishioners, had previously forbidden any above-ground crypts and large headstones in the small 11-acre (45,000 m2) cemetery. A parish committee convened to resolve the dispute was willing to make an exception for the singer, with an above-ground sarcophagus-style tomb. In addition to requesting burial at St. Agnes, Smith left $25,000 to the church—and half of the residuals of her estate. It is because the church stands to gain from the disposition of the will, some observers said, that it first opposed what the lawyer for the church, Fred Dennin, called the executors' rather grandiose plans for an 11-foot (3.4 m)-high, $90,000 mausoleum.

Kate Smith was inducted posthumously into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1999. She was inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame in 2009.

In 2010 a U.S. commemorative stamp was issued featuring stamp art duplicates artwork created for the cover of a CD titled, “Kate Smith: The Songbird of the South.” The artwork was based on a photograph of Smith taken in the 1960s.

On July 21, 2011, Kate Smith's version of "God Bless America" was played as NASA's final wake up call for the space shuttle Atlantis, ending the 30-year shuttle program.