Sudden Death
In 1981, after a long fight with Hodgkin's Disease - a cancer of the Lymph Glands - Tonge died aged only 35. He had caught chicken pox and died of heart failure, his system unable to cope with the infection. A constant companion at his side was his girlfriend, actress Sonia Fox who played Sheila Harvey in Crossroads. By the time of his death, she had already left the series and the couple had kept their romance secret from the press. Noele Gordon, who played Tonge's on-screen mother, paid tribute to him as the son she had never had in real life.
Read more about this topic: Roger Tonge
Famous quotes containing the words sudden death, sudden and/or death:
“Before my face it lays down my despairs,
And hastes me on unto a sudden death,”
—Michael Drayton (1563–1631)
“Loss of freedom seldom happens overnight. Oppression doesn’t stand on the doorstep with toothbrush moustache and swastika armband—it creeps up insidiously ... step by step, and all of a sudden the unfortunate citizen realises that it is gone.”
—Baron Lane (b. 1918)
“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)