Final Days
On June 10, 1964, during the roll call for the historic, successful effort to break the filibuster on what would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when the clerk reached "Mr. Engle," there was no reply. The tumor had robbed Engle of his ability to speak. Slowly lifting an arm, he pointed to his eye, thereby signaling his affirmative vote ("aye"). The cloture vote was 71-29, four votes more than the two-thirds required to cut off the filibuster. Nine days later the Senate approved the Act itself.
Engle died in Washington, D.C. a month and a half later, aged 52.
Trinity Lake, in California's Trinity County, was renamed for Clair Engle, although the name Trinity Lake continued to be commonly used, and eventually the lake's original name was restored.
Read more about this topic: Clair Engle
Famous quotes containing the words final and/or days:
“The place became full of a watchful intentness now; for when other things sank brooding to sleep the heath appeared slowly to awake and listen. Every night its Titanic form seemed to await something; but it had waited thus, unmoved, during so many centuries, through the crises of so many things, that it could only be imagined to await one last crisis—the final overthrow.”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)
“I wish the days to be as centuries, loaded, fragrant. Now we reckon them as bank-days, by some debt which is to be paid us, or which we are to pay, or some pleasure we are to taste.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)