Marriage and Family
He married Mary Bernice Townsend, a medical technician, on November 7, 1946. Fearing that he was sterile, the married couple adopted their first daughter, Mary Pratt. They later managed to conceive their second daughter Ann, who was deaf from an early age. The family settled in Covington, Louisiana. Percy's wife and one of their daughters had a bookstore, where he often wrote in an office on the second floor.
Walker Percy died of prostate cancer in 1990, eighteen days before his 74th birthday. He is buried on the grounds of St. Joseph Benedictine Abbey in St. Benedict, Louisiana. He was a secular oblate of the Abbey's monastic community, making his final oblation on February 16, 1990, less than three months before his death.
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Famous quotes containing the words marriage and, marriage and/or family:
“Christianity as an organized religion has not always had a harmonious relationship with the family. Unlike Judaism, it kept almost no rituals that took place in private homes. The esteem that monasticism and priestly celibacy enjoyed implied a denigration of marriage and parenthood.”
—Beatrice Gottlieb, U.S. historian. The Family in the Western World from the Black Death to the Industrial Age, ch. 12, Oxford University Press (1993)
“From infancy, almost, the average girl is told that marriage is her ultimate goal; therefore her training and education must be directed toward that end. Like the mute beast fattened for slaughter, she is prepared for that.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“Views of women, on one side, as inwardly directed toward home and family and notions of men, on the other, as outwardly striving toward fame and fortune have resounded throughout literature and in the texts of history, biology, and psychology until they seem uncontestable. Such dichotomous views defy the complexities of individuals and stifle the potential for people to reveal different dimensions of themselves in various settings.”
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