Death
Smith died unexpectedly at the relatively young age of 39 after contracting shigella and pneumonia while on a trip to India, apparently as a result of AIDS. It is suspected that Smith himself didn't know he had the disease, although those around him knew he was fragile in his last days. Most thought it was just that Smith had pushed himself so hard, being such a perfectionist with his work. John Bartlett, who was working at the time of Smith's untimely death, took over design operations and remained until 1990.
Smith, who was openly gay, has a panel in the original NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt and is also lamented in a poem Speak: A Poem for the Millennium March by Keith Boykin, read by its author for the Millennium March on Washington for Equality on April 29, 2000.
Read more about this topic: Willi Smith
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“Hunger shall make thy modest zone
And cheat fond death of all but bone—”
—Cecil Day Lewis (1904–1972)
“for it is not so much to know the self
as to know it as it is known
by galaxy and cedar cone,
as if birth had never found it
and death could never end it:”
—Archie Randolph Ammons (b. 1926)