Death
Astor died on August 13, 2007 at the age of 105 from pneumonia at her home in Briarcliff Manor, New York.
One of Astor's death notices in the Times, a paid notice from The Rockefeller University, ended with these lines:
-
- "And if you should survive to 105,
- Look at all you'll derive out of being alive.
- Then here is the best part,
- You'll have a head start,
- If you are among the very young at heart."
Among the organizations who lamented her death included the New York Public Library, New York University, the New York Regional Association of Grantmakers, the New York Botanical Garden, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, WNET-TV, Historic Hudson Valley, The Juilliard School, the New York Landmarks Conservancy, the Wildlife Conservation Society, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Carnegie Hall, the Morris-Juemel Mansion Museum, the Citizens' Committee for New York City, the Rockefeller University, the Animal Medical Center, the Merchant's House Museum, the Library of America, the Pierpont Morgan Library, the Lotos Club, Lenox Hill Neighborhood House and the Brooklyn Stained Glass Conservation Center.
She is interred in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Sleepy Hollow, New York. The epitaph on her gravestone, chosen by her, reads: "I had a wonderful life".
Read more about this topic: Brooke Astor
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“Young lover to old lover: I do not feel death in your embrace, but the adoration of the patriarchs.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Consider his life which was valueless
In terms of employment, hotel ledgers, news files.
Consider. One bullet in ten thousand kills a man.
Ask. Was so much expenditure justified
On the death of one so young and so silly
Lying under the olive tree, O world, O death?”
—Stephen Spender (1909–1995)
“To die, to sleep—
No more, and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to—’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep.
To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there’s the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil
Must give us pause.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)