Death
On March 23, 1931, Time Magazine wrote:
Last week small, spry, white-haired William Wattis was in San Francisco's St. Francis Hospital taking the Coffey-Humber cancer treatment when word reached him that his company had won the contract to build Hoover Dam. His jolly blue eyes snapped with delight. Wrapped in his bathrobe, and puffing a big, black cigar he talked eagerly: "Now this dam is just a dam but it's a damn big dam. Otherwise it's no different than others we've thrown up in a dozen places. It involves a lot of money—more money than any one contractor has a right to have. ... I don't know when I'll get out of here. I think I am improving but don't worry, I'll be on this job."However, he did not live to see Hoover Dam completed; W.H. Wattis died in California, on September 13, 1931 of cancer. Shortly before his death on June 9, 1931, the University of Utah honored him with a Doctorate of Law degree.
Wattis loved life, family and friends. He was an avid golfer, hunter and traveler.
Read more about this topic: William Henry Wattis
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“Water, earth, air, fire, and the other parts of this structure of mine are no more instruments of your life than instruments of your death. Why do you fear your last day? It contributes no more to your death than each of the others. The last step does not cause the fatigue, but reveals it. All days travel toward death, the last one reaches it.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“Young lover to old lover: I do not feel death in your embrace, but the adoration of the patriarchs.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“The ancients adorned their sarcophagi with the emblems of life and procreation, and even with obscene symbols; in the religions of antiquity the sacred and the obscene often lay very close together. These men knew how to pay homage to death. For death is worthy of homage as the cradle of life, as the womb of palingenesis.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)