Arthur Calwell - Death

Death

At the 1972 election which brought Whitlam to the Prime Ministership, Calwell retired from Parliament. In July 1973, he died. He was given a state funeral at St Patrick's Cathedral, Melbourne. He was survived by his wife Elizabeth and his daughter Mary Elizabeth.

Notwithstanding Calwell's poor relations with the conservative press in Australia and his public battles against right-wing Catholics like Archbishop Mannix and B. A. Santamaria, he maintained a cordial relationship with Menzies. Menzies, for his part, never lost his respect and outright personal liking for Calwell. He attended Calwell's obsequies, but (according to his biographer Allan W. Martin) became so overwhelmed by grief after arriving at the cathedral that he was actually unable to compose himself and leave his car.

Read more about this topic:  Arthur Calwell

Famous quotes containing the word death:

    Though you forget the way to the Temple,
    There is one who remembers the way to your door:
    Life you may evade, but Death you shall not.
    You shall not deny the Stranger.
    —T.S. (Thomas Stearns)

    And Death fell with me, like a deepening moan.
    And He, picking a manner of worm, which half had hid
    Its bruises in the earth, but crawled no further,
    Showed me its feet, the feet of many men,
    And the fresh-severed head of it, my head.
    Wilfred Owen (1893–1918)

    What we think of as our sensitivity is only the higher evolution of terror in a poor dumb beast. We suffer for nothing. Our own death wish is our only real tragedy.
    Mario Puzo (b. 1920)