Word: rayburns
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...hundreds of other dignitaries from all over the U.S. At the door of the church, William ("Fishbait") Miller, longtime chief doorkeeper of the House, greeted the distinguished mourners and quietly ushered them to their seats. Out front, an overflow crowd of the friends and neighbors of Samuel Taliaferro Rayburn waited in the street...
...casket under a mantle of deep red roses. "Whatever was great and noble in his life shall abide forever," said the Rev. Bernard Braskamp, chaplain of the House. "We are not saying farewell, only good night." Elder H. G. Ball, the Primitive Baptist Church pastor who had baptized Sam Rayburn just five years ago, intoned the eulogy. Then, while the organ played America, the Beautiful, six of Mister Sam's lifelong friends carried him away...
...broke through the wintry sky as the funeral cortege made its way to Willow Wild Cemetery, where, in the family plot, Sam Rayburn was laid to rest beside the grave of his favorite sister, Lucinda...
After the funeral, the mourners silently went their separate ways. They had known for weeks that Sam Rayburn was dying-but he had somehow seemed indestructible, and few could believe that the end would really come. In fact, the fatal cancer that eventually consumed Rayburn was at work during the spring of 1961, when lines of pain began etching his face and he complained of an aching back. Twice during last June and July he lost consciousness while sitting in the Speaker's chair, only to recover within moments and carry on as though nothing had happened. "They...
...October, after a month in his Bonham home, Rayburn went to Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas for extensive medical tests. Surgical examination showed cancer of the lymphatic system-inoperable, incurable and spreading through his body. When he recovered consciousness, Mister Sam asked his doctors for the truth and got it. "This," Rayburn told a great-nephew, Robert Bartley Jr., "is the damnedest thing that ever got ahold...