Death
Halberstam died on April 23, 2007 in a traffic accident in Menlo Park, California near the Dumbarton Bridge. He was in the area to give a talk at an event at UC Berkeley and was en route to Mountain View to interview Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback Y.A. Tittle for a book about the 1958 NFL Championship. Halberstam's driver Kevin Jones, a graduate student at the UC Berkeley Journalism School who was given the opportunity to drive Halberstam to the interview by the department, pleaded no contest to misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter charges. Jones proceeded from a controlled left turn lane on California State Route 84 against opposing traffic and a red light, and his vehicle was then hit broadside on the front passenger side, with fatal consequences for his passenger, Halberstam. Jones was subsequently sentenced to five days in jail (with the sentencing judge recommending that the sentence be served in the San Mateo County Sheriff's Office's work program rather than actually behind bars), to 200 hours of community service, and to two years of probation. The judge also ordered Jones to complete a driving course. The California Department of Motor Vehicles suspended Jones's driver's license for a period of one to three years.
After Halberstam's death, the book project was taken over by Frank Gifford, who played for the losing New York Giants in the 1958 championship game, and was published by HarperCollins in October 2008 with an introduction dedicated to David Halberstam.
Read more about this topic: David Halberstam
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“Families suffered badly under industrialization, but they survived, and the lives of men, women, and children improved. Children, once marginal and exploited figures, have moved to a position of greater protection and respect,... The historic decline in the overall death rates for children is an astonishing social fact, notwithstanding the disgraceful infant mortality figures for the poor and minorities. Like the decline in death from childbirth for women, this is a stunning achievement.”
—Joseph Featherstone (20th century)
“War. Fighting. Men ... every man in the whole realm is in the army.... Every man in uniform ... An economy entirely geared to war ... but there is not much war ... hardly any fighting ... yet every man a soldier from birth till death ... Men ... all men for fighting ... but no war, no wars to fight ... what is it, what does it mean?””
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)
“No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main.... Any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in Mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
—John Donne (c. 1572–1631)