Rod Serling - Death

Death

"As long as they talk about you, you're not really dead, as long as they speak your name, you continue. A legend doesn't die, just because the man dies."

--From "A Game Of Pool," written by George Clayton Johnson, aired on The Twilight Zone, October 31, 1961.

"In early March Serling traveled to Washington, DC," wrote his biographer Joel Engel, "to debrief the State Department on his trip to the Orient and to address the local chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. ... Shortly after the speech, while driving with his brother to apartment, where he stayed, Serling began to complain of chest pains and asked to be taken to the hospital. ... called his personal physician, who checked Serling into Washington Hospital Center for tests and observation. Rumors circulated that he had suffered a heart attack, and within twenty-four hours, newspapers, television, and radio all over the country reported news of his grave illness. In truth, he experienced again only extreme exhaustion, aggravated by some mild form of food poisoning. The diagnosis, for at least the second time in his life, was greater relaxation."

On May 3, 1975, Serling suffered a minor heart attack and was hospitalized. He spent two weeks at Tompkins County Community Hospital before being released. A second heart attack two weeks later forced doctors to agree that open-heart surgery, though considered risky at the time, was in order. The 10-hour long procedure was carried out on June 26, but Serling suffered a heart attack on the operating table and died two days later at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, NY. He was 50 years old. His funeral took place on July 2.

A memorial was held in Cornell University's Sage Chapel on July 7, 1975. Speakers at the Memorial included his daughter, Anne, and the Reverend John F. Hayward.

As newspapers began spreading word of his death, many of them mentioned that he had been a heavy smoker for years and was angry and stressed most of his life. Although this was all true, interviews with his wife in later years mentioned that both his father and grandfather had also died in their 50s of heart problems. On the other hand, his older brother, Robert, lived to the age of 92.