Later Years
In his final years, Meany took up amateur photography and painting as hobbies.
Meany's wife of 59 years, Eugenia, died in March 1979, and he became ""despondent". He injured his knee in a golfing mishap a few months before his death, and was confined to a wheelchair. In November, 1979, he resigned from the AFL-CIO after a 57 year career in organized labor. He was succeeded by Lane Kirkland, who served as AFL-CIO president for 16 years.
Meany died at George Washington University Hospital on January 10, 1980. The AFL-CIO had 14 million members at time of death. President Jimmy Carter called him "an American institution" and "a patriot".
Read more about this topic: George Meany
Famous quotes containing the word years:
“After years of vain familiarity, some distant gesture or unconscious behavior, which we remember, speaks to us with more emphasis than the wisest or kindest words. We are sometimes made aware of a kindness long passed, and realize that there have been times when our Friends’ thoughts of us were of so pure and lofty a character that they passed over us like the winds of heaven unnoticed; when they treated us not as what we were, but as what we aspired to be.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“What is it then between us?
What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us?
Whatever it is, it avails not—distance avails not, and
place avails not,”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)