by Lisa Fagan

Created on: July 04, 2008   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

I can't clearly stress this, but the most memorable Fourth of July ever was in 1995, and it was a day that would soon change my life. It was on that particualr day that my very favorite actress and the idol of my youth, Eva Gabor, passed away. She died at Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles at the age of 74 from pneumonia.

July 4, 1995 started out to be just a typical Fourth of July. At that time, I was living in downtown Philadelphia, not too far from Independence Hall, where our nation was born. I was in the mood to read some celebrity gossip, so I went down to the corner newsstand and got both the Star and the National Enquirer. Then all of a sudden, right there on the front page of the Enquirer, the headline read: EVA GABOR'S SECRET FIGHT FOR LIFE, and I just couldn't believe it.

On Tuesday, June 20, she fell and broke her hip while on a week's vacation down in Mexico. The next day, (Wedhesday, June 21) taken to Cedars Sinai Medical Center, with fluid already in her lungs. According to David Bender in Merv Griffin's autobiography in 2003, she refused treatment in Mexico and preferred to see her own doctors in Los Angeles. She was diagnosed
with viral pneumonia, and put on life support. The National Enquirer said that she ate a bad peiece of fruit while in Mexico, that the doctors had discovered a life-threatening blood clot, and put her on Heparin, an anti-clotting drug. I don't know how true that was.

Well anyway, her condition had worsened, she fell into a coma, and at 10:05 am on Tuesday, July 4, America's 219th birthday, Eva Gabor had passed away. My mother then called me at three o'clock that afternoon, told me the bad news, and then I asked her, WHEN DID SHE DIE?. My two brothers also called me with the same bad news as well. On the 5 o'clock local news that day, I also heard the annoucement, HOLLYWOOD MOURNS THE LOSS OF ONE OF THE GABOR SISTERS.

The next day, (Wednesday, July 5,) I bought a few of the newspapers, with her obituary, but I just can't simply describe how I felt that day. The idol of my youth was gone, as well as thirty years of my life. We are talking about somebody whom I admired and idolized ever since I was eight years old, when I first saw her on the television series Green Acres. Her death was the only one that really affected me. I was just simply crying on and off because I couldn't accept the fact that she was dead, and it took me practically five years to get over it.

Every year, on the Fourth of July, I pause for 74 seconds of silence at five minutes past 1 o'clock (to coincide with the time that she died in California), and then say a few short prayers. Although America celebrates in independence from Great Britain on July 4, I commemorate the day that the idol of my youth, Eva Gabor, won her freedom and independence from her pain and suffering, and now, she's in a much better place today.

This is how I choose to commemorate the Fourth of July.

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