Final Days and Death
Longworth served as speaker until 1931, after the Republicans lost their House majority in the election of 1930. Journalist Frank R. Kent of the Baltimore Sun wrote of him:
- "Without any revision of the rules he completely recovered the power of the speakership and was the undisputed leader of the House with as autocratic control as either Reed or Cannon. It is true he exercised this power with infinitely more tact and grace and gumption and without that touch of offensive arrogance that characterized former House Czars. But he was just as much a Czar. What Mr. Longworth clearly proved was this matter of leadership depends not so much on the rules but on the man.
While visiting his friend Dwight Filley Davis (of Davis Cup fame), and Daniel J. Duckett in Aiken, South Carolina, Longworth caught pneumonia and died unexpectedly. His wife Alice brought his body back to Cincinnati, where it was interred in the Spring Grove Cemetery. At a memorial service held at the Library of Congress on May 3, 1931, his old friends Efrem Zimbalist and Harold Bauer played Brahms's D minor sonata.
Read more about this topic: Nicholas Longworth
Famous quotes containing the words final, days and/or death:
“So that the old joy, modest as cake, as wine and friendship
Will stay with us at the last, backed by the night
Whose ruse gave it our final meaning.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“Gone are the days when my heart was young and gay,
Gone are my friends from the cotton fields away,
Gone from the earth to a better land I know,
I hear their gentle voices calling Old Black Joe.”
—Stephen Collins Foster (18261864)
“I mourn the safe and motherly old middle-class queen, who held the nation warm under the fold of her big, hideous Scotch-plaid shawl and whose duration had been so extraordinarily convenient and beneficent. I felt her death much more than I should have expected; she was a sustaining symboland the wild waters are upon us now.”
—Henry James (18431916)