Eastman was standing with his back to them. They walked toward his room and the nurse partly opened the door. She started back upstairs to check on the matter and met Eastman’s nurse. He mentioned this to his secretary and told her to go to the bank and get the money.Īs she went out the door he called, “Oh, Miss Whitney, get them $20 gold pieces.” She thought about this and was worried perhaps she had not heard right. It was an old custom of Eastman’s to give $10 gold pieces to anyone who witnessed his signature. They left the room and Eastman’s longtime secretary, Mrs. “You shouldn’t kick about that pen, you gave it to me,” Eastman reminded him.Įastman signed and the three witnesses followed. His fountain pen gave him trouble as he started to sign the will, and Crouch suggested he could afford to buy a new one. He helped place their chairs and joked, as he usually did, with his old friend Frank Crouch. In Eastman’s home, it began as usual, with music from the pipe organ.Įastman was in his bedroom when the Kodak group arrived at 11:15. Monday, March 14, 1932, was an icy winter day in Rochester. What happened next was described in the Apissue of LIFE magazine: Whatever the root cause, it made it difficult for him to stand, and reduced his walk to a slow, painful shuffle.Īs Eastman had seen his mother confined to a wheelchair during her final years from the same condition, he grew depressed. Unfortunately, Eastman was plagued by chronic pain in his final years, most likely from what modern doctors would diagnose as lumbar spinal stenosis, a narrowing of the spinal canal.

St george earman