His life ebbing away, a former U.S. Republican senator had Donald Trump in mind—and it was not a thought the presumptive Republican presidential nominee would cherish.
As he lay on his bed at the George Washington University Hospital in Washington D.C., Bob Bennett told his wife and son that he would like to spend his last days letting Muslims know how sorry he was that an Islamophobe had become his party's all-but-certain nominee, the Daily Beast reports. Bennett passed away on Wednesday, May 18.
After a stroke had complicated his yearlong fight against pancreatic cancer, the former three-term senator from Utah told his wife Joyce and son Jim to come close to hear his dying wish.
"Are there any Muslims in the hospital?" he asked.
"I'd love to go up to every single one of them to thank them for being in this country, and apologise to them on behalf of the Republican Party for Donald Trump," Bennett told his family. Joyce and Jim later relayed the former senator's remarks to The Daily Beast.
Trump's rise to political prominence had dismayed Bennett. "In the last days of his life this was an issue that was pressing in his mind... disgust for Donald Trump's xenophobia," his son Jim said.
Trump's proposal to ban Muslim immigrants from America had outraged the former senator, his wife Joyce said.
More 'political' dying words ...
Meanwhile, a dying 68-year-old nurse from Richmond, Virginia requested her family to post an obituary she had made for herself before she passed away on Sunday.
Mary Anne Noland came up with this obituary, according to WND:
"NOLAND, Mary Anne Alfriend. Faced with the prospect of voting for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, Mary Anne Noland of Richmond chose, instead, to pass into the eternal love of God on Sunday, May 15, 2016, at the age of 68."
While Noland disliked Trump, Ernest Overbey Jr., 65, another Richmond resident and lifelong Republican, was a Trump supporter until he breathed his last in January. He was such a staunch supporter of Trump that he requested his wife Deborah to add the words "Please vote for Donald Trump" to his obituary.
In August 2015, WND reported that Philadelphia's Elaine Fydrych requested an obituary to express her dislike of Hillary Clinton.
The woman's dying words, as published by the South Jersey Times: "In lieu of flowers, please do not vote for Hillary Clinton."
