Brooke Astor, USA's civic leader, philanthropist and fixture of New York high society died at the age of 105 Monday August 12.
Astor, recently the center of a highly publicized legal dispute over her care with her son Anthony Marshall and a grandson, died of pneumonia at Holly Hill, her Westchester County estate in Briarcliff Manor.
Brooke Astor, was married to her third husband Vincent Astor after he divorced his second wife in 1953. In 1959, Vincent died leaving all of his money, most of which was inherited from Vincet's father John Jacob Astor IV who went down with the Titanic in 1912.
Astor's famous motto is "Money is like manure, it should be spread around." So, Brooke Astor donated nearly $200 million in her life to support New York's great cultural institutions, like the New York Public Library and Carnegie Hall among others. and other organizations.
She once wished that the epitaph on her gravestone to simply read "I had a wonderful life."