Later Life and Death
In 1974, Frank Cannon, McCollum's lead attorney at her trial, appeal and second trial, visited her in the mental hospital and filed papers to have her released under the Baker Act.
In November 1980, Al Lee of the Ocala Star Banner interviewed McCollum at the rest home in Silver Springs, Florida where she had retired after leaving Chattahoochee. Lee stated that McCollum's memory of the entire ordeal had faded. The State Mental Hospital at Chattahoochee was known for mis-treatment such as keeping patients on Thorazine and giving electroshock therapy.
On May 23, 1992, at 4:45 a.m., McCollum died of a stroke at the New Horizon Rehabilitation Center, at the age of eighty-two, following the death of her brother, Matt, by less than a year. She is buried beside him in the cemetery behind Hopewell Baptist Church, 145th Road (Fort Union area), Live Oak, Suwannee County, Florida. Her name was entered on her death certificate as "Ruby McCollumn", and her burial place as a "rural cemetery" near Ocala.
Read more about this topic: Ruby Mc Collum
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There are some things which cannot be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring. They are the very simplest things and because it takes a man’s life to know them the little new that each man gets from life is very costly and the only heritage he has to leave.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
““Promise me solemnly,” I said to her as she lay on what I believed to be her death bed, “if you find in the world beyond the grave that you can communicate with me—that there is some way in which you can make me aware of your continued existence—promise me solemnly that you will never, never avail yourself of it.” She recovered and never, never forgave me.”
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