Later Years
Pedro Pietri was diagnosed with stomach cancer in 2003. He went to Mexico to receive an alternative treatment for a year. On March 3, 2004, Pedro died en route from Mexico to New York. Funeral services were held in East Harlem at the historic First Spanish Methodist Church, which was taken over in 1969 by the Youngs Lords and renamed at the time as "The First People's Church" to provide free breakfast and other programs to the poor and working people of El Barrio. This is where, fittingly, Pedro first read in public his classic poem, "Puerto Rican Obituary", in support of the Lords' takeover of the church.
Pedro is survived by his children Diana, Evava and Speedo.
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Famous quotes containing the word years:
“I have lived some thirty-odd years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... it is use, and use alone, which leads one of us, tolerably trained to recognize any criterion of grace or any sense of the fitness of things, to tolerate ... the styles of dress to which we are more or less conforming every day of our lives. Fifty years hence they will seem to us as uncultivated as the nose-rings of the Hottentot seem today.”
—Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844–1911)