Death
On September 22, 2011, Williams was found dead in a hotel room in El Segundo, California, a suburb of Los Angeles. According to the county coroner's office, Williams was found dead at 6:15 p.m. A Los Angeles County Coroner's Office spokesperson stated that the following autopsy did not yield a cause of death. In late December 2011, the family released this statement, through a family friend singer/producer Norwood Young, reporting her official cause of death: "Following three months of intensive coroner's autopsy and toxicology research, it has been definitively determined that the cause of death for our beloved Vesta was 'natural death' from 'hypertensive heart disease,'" adding: "An enlarged heart can remain undetected for many years."
Vesta Williams was laid to rest at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills) on Octoder 4th, 2011 following the memorial service at West Angeles Church of God in Christ in Los Angeles, California. Attendees included notable friends Wanda Dee, singer Peggi Blu, Freda Payne, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Loretta Devine, Kellita Smith, Norwood Young, Michael Collier (author), Miki Howard, Karel Bouley, Kiki Shepard, Jackee’, Luenell and renowned Blues singer, Linda Hopkins. A private reception was held following the interment.
She is survived by her mother, daughter, three sisters, a brother and three grandchildren as well as many cousins, friends and fans.
Read more about this topic: Vesta Williams
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“Life is grown sweeter and lonelier,
And death is no evil.”
—Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)
“We achieve “active” mastery over illness and death by delegating all responsibility for their management to physicians, and by exiling the sick and the dying to hospitals. But hospitals serve the convenience of staff not patients: we cannot be properly ill in a hospital, nor die in one decently; we can do so only among those who love and value us. The result is the institutionalized dehumanization of the ill, characteristic of our age.”
—Thomas Szasz (b. 1920)
“hung up like a pig on exhibit,
the delicate wrists,
the beard drooling blood and vinegar;
hooked to your own weight,
jolting toward death under your nameplate.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)