Later Years (1947-1986)
In 1947, due to a combination of glaucoma and detachment of a retina Henry Gilman became blind in one eye and lost most of his vision in the other. He was forced to rely on his wife and students to act as his eyes, to read and write for him. His wife was almost always at his side to guide him in unfamiliar places and inform him of the people around him. Remarkably, he continued much of his work and never let his loss of sight hinder his skills. It could be argued that the majority of Gilman’s work was done after 1947. In 1973, the current chemistry building at Iowa State University was renamed Henry Gilman Hall.
Gilman suffered from heart problems late in his life and was fitted with a pace-maker at the age of 88. He died in Ames, IA at the age of 93 and was followed by his wife less than two months later and she was followed by their daughter Jane six months later.
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Famous quotes containing the word years:
“Twenty or thirty years ago, in the army, we had a lot of obscure adventures, and years later we tell them at parties, and suddenly we realize that those two very difficult years of our lives have become lumped together into a few episodes that have lodged in our memory in a standardized form, and are always told in a standardized way, in the same words. But in fact that lump of memories has nothing whatsoever to do with our experience of those two years in the army and what it has made of us.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)