Emanuel Celler - Final Years

Final Years

In his final eight years, from January 1973 to January 1981, Celler remained busy, speaking about immigration and myriad other topics that occupied his half-century of public service. During the Watergate scandal of 1973–74, he was a frequent guest on television and radio programs, discussing the hearings and the position of Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, which he held for a record number of years. If not for his electoral loss a few months before, Celler, not Peter Rodino of New Jersey, would have been conducting the hearings. Celler was on good terms with Richard Nixon and in the early part of the hearings indicated that he would have taken a less adversarial position than Rodino.

In 1978, shortly after his 90th birthday, he had granted an interview in which he reflected on his life and the presidents he had known, from Warren G. Harding to Gerald Ford who, like Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon, had been Celler's House of Representatives colleague.

Emanuel Celler died in his native Brooklyn at the age of 92.