Later Years
In 1921, Edith Wilson retired with the former president to their home on S Street NW in Washington, D.C., nursing him until his death three years later. She later served as director of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. Her memoir appeared in 1939.
When Franklin D. Roosevelt went to Congress on December 8, 1941, he took pains to draw a symbolic link with the April 1917 declaration of war. To do so, he was accompanied by Mrs. Wilson.
In 1961, she attended the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy.
She died of congestive heart failure at the age of 89, on December 28, 1961, on what would have been Woodrow Wilson's 105th birthday. On the day of her death, she was to have been the guest of honor at the dedication ceremony for the Woodrow Wilson Bridge across the Potomac River between Maryland and Virginia. She was buried next to the president at the Washington Cathedral.
Mrs. Wilson left her home to the National Trust for Historic Preservation to be made into a museum honoring her husband. The Woodrow Wilson House opened as a museum in 1964.
Read more about this topic: Edith Bolling Galt Wilson
Famous quotes containing the word years:
“But—if you cannot give us ease—
Last of the race of them who grieve
Here leave us to die out with these
Last of the people who believe!
Silent, while years engrave the brow;
Silent—the best are silent now.”
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)
“It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear, that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)