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/or family:
“Every relationship that does not raise us up pulls us down, and vice versa; this is why men usually sink down somewhat when they take wives while women are usually somewhat raised up. Overly spiritual men require marriage every bit as much as they resist it as bitter medicine.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Happy or unhappy, families are all mysterious. We have only to imagine how differently we would be described—and will be, after our deaths—by each of the family members who believe they know us.”
—Gloria Steinem (b. 1934)