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:
“I, who cannot stay in my chamber for a single day without acquiring some rust,... confess that I am astonished at the power of endurance, to say nothing of the moral insensibility, of my neighbors who confine themselves to shops and offices the whole day for weeks and months, aye, and years almost together. I know not what manner of stuff they are of,—sitting there now at three o’clock in the afternoon, as if it were three o’clock in the morning.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“But he answered his father, Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’”
—Bible: New Testament, Luke 15:29,30.