Death and Legacy
Bruce Catton died in a hospital near his summer home at Frankfort, Michigan, following a respiratory illness. He was buried in Benzonia Township Cemetery in Benzie County, Michigan.
In 1977, the year before his death, Catton received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, from President Gerald R. Ford, who noted that the author and historian "made us hear the sounds of battle and cherish peace."
Of the many Civil War historians, Catton was arguably the most prolific and popular. Oliver Jensen, who succeeded him as editor of American Heritage magazine, wrote:
No one ever wrote American history with more easy grace, beauty and emotional power, or greater understanding of its meaning, than Bruce Catton. There is a near-magic power of imagination in Catton's work that seemed to project him physically into the battlefields, along the dusty roads and to the campfires of another age.Read more about this topic: Bruce Catton
Famous quotes containing the words death and/or legacy:
“The dignity to be sought in death is the appreciation by others of what one has been in life,... that proceeds from a life well lived and from the acceptance of one’s own death as a necessary process of nature.... It is also the recognition that the real event taking place at the end of our life is our death, not the attempts to prevent it.”
—Sherwin B. Nuland (b. 1930)
“What is popularly called fame is nothing but an empty name and a legacy from paganism.”
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