Famous Last Words

 

Pete Maravich was one of the greatest basketball players of all time. He was so good he remains the only white player ever to be offered a contract by the famed Harlem Globe Trotters. On January 5, 1988, 40-year-old "Pistol Pete," as he was known, was playing in a pickup game in Pasadena. On a break, he walked over to a minister who was watching and told him, "I feel great;" and then dropped dead. Neither Maravich or the minister he was with were Freemasons; but this episode isn't about Pete Maravich. It's about famous last words.

There are dozens upon dozens of reports of people's famous last words. Take, for example, the Marx Brothers who gave us a couple of them. Groucho's dying quip was, "This is no way to live," while Chico told his wife, "Put in my coffin a deck of cards, a golf club, and a pretty blonde.”

Soothsayer Nostradamus' last prediction, which came true, was also the last thing he said, "Tomorrow, at sunrise, I shall no longer be here.”

As Joan Crawford lay dying her housekeeper stood in the room praying for her. Crawford became angry and yelled at her, “Damn it! Don’t you dare ask God to help me!”

Of course there are a number of Freemasons who have chimed in with some interesting last words. Nell Land, wife of Brother Frank Land, founder of DeMolay reported as he lay dying he looked at her and with his last breath said, "It is the beginning."

Brother Winston Churchill, just before slipping into a coma for the final time, whispered, "I'm bored with it all."

Sarah Franklin, daughter of Brother Benjamin Franklin, agonized as she saw him suffering and struggling to breathe on his death bed. Trying to help, she suggested he shift position so he could breathe more easily. Franklin replied, "A dying man can do nothing easy.”

As his life faded, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe asked for the window's shutters to be opened and said, "More light." A Freemason asking for more light… Imagine that.

But the one in particular I wanted to mention was a Brother you may not be familiar with, Georges Jacques Danton

Danton (1759-1794), was a member of the Lodge of the Nine Sisters at Paris. He held many public offices, most notably president of the National Convention which effectively made him the President of France in 1793. A revolutionary leader, Danton advocated the overthrow of the French monarchy in favor of a unified France and stable republican government.  In August, 1792, He led and uprising against the king. Caught up in the "Reign of Terror," Danton went to prison and the guillotine at the order of the dictator Robespierre.  As Brother Danton's cart carried him to his execution, it rolled past Robespierre's house with Danton shouting insults at the tyrant and predicting he would also be executed... which he was.  When the executioner took him up to the guillotine, Brother Danton turned to him and uttered some of history's most famous last words, "You will show my head to the crowd: It is worth seeing."