Nation: HENRY R. LUCE: End of a Pilgrimage
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On Sunday morning at 9:30, Luce rang the cook from his bedroom-office and ordered breakfast—orange juice, French toast, two slices of bacon, coffee. Ten minutes later he called back and asked the cook to remove the tray. He apologized to her for leaving his breakfast untouched, explaining: "It isn't that the food isn't good. I just don't feel well." After he had spent the morning in bed, Clare Luce called their family doctor in Phoenix, Dr. Hayes Caldwell. Luce insisted that he was well, and Dr. Caldwell examined him and found his pulse and blood pressure normal.
When he seemed no better on Monday, the doctor persuaded Luce to go to St. Joseph's Hospital. The patient insisted on walking out to the ambulance, carrying his shoes and a clutch of books, including a paperback Perry Mason. That night he admitted: "I seem to be unusually sleepy." He slept only fitfully, and got up several times to pace around the room. At 3 a.m. his nurse heard him fall heavily on the bathroom floor. She summoned a hospital resuscitation team, which tried in vain to revive the patient with shock treatment and cardiac massage.
Henry Luce died at 3:15 a.m.
Resounding Paean. During memorial services at Manhattan's Madison Ave nue Presbyterian Church, where he had worshiped for 43 years, a springlike sun blazed through the stained-glass windows and, refracting from the banks of flowers that he had always loved in profusion, played like stage lighting across the illustrious throng gathered in the five-story nave. The congregation, linked by a private hookup to two other gatherings in the New York Time-Life Building, sang three old standbys: Samuel Wesley's The Church's One Foundation, Faith of our Fathers and Praise, My Soul, The King of Heaven, adapted from the 103rd Psalm.
In a graceful, perceptive memorial address, Dr. Read described his parishioner as "a man of unlimited imagination who reveled in hard facts; one who could be gruff with the mighty and relaxed with little children; a thinker who could see all sides of a question and yet make a quick and implacable decision. To talk with him was to shift the mind into high gear, for his was never in neutral."
Luce was one of the few contemporary intellectuals who were not only well versed in theology but who also cherished his father's faith. "Thus," said the minister, "while he enjoyed the dissection of sermons and theological debate, he also liked to be told—told of the mercy of God, told of the duties of the Christian faith." Evoking a memorable 1962 speech by Luce in which he depicted the nation's past and questing future as the American Pilgrimage, Dr. Read concluded his address with John Bunyan's resounding paean:
Who would true valour see, Let him come hither; One here will constant be, Come wind, come weather; There's no discouragement Shall make him once relent His first avowed intent To be a pilgrim . . .
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