Gogebic County MI Archives Obituaries.....O'Neill, James A 1923
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Pat McArthur http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00025.html#0006091 January 18, 2009, 3:16 pm

Wakefield Advocate, May 5, 1923
MAY 5, 1923
ON JAMES A. O'NEILL
James A. O'Neill, mayor of Ironwood, has surrendered the reins of office, for 
death has claimed him.

Mr. O'Neill was a man of brilliant attainments, but he died before his time, a 
victim of his own strong feelings.  Any of the strong passions affects anyone 
who gives way to them, and Mr. O'Neill was bitterly intense in his feelings.  
He lived them in his waking hours and he lived them over in his dreams.  He 
was a strong supporter of what he believed was right and he was a strong 
enemy.  When he was in fighting trim, he made the cause of those for whom  he 
fought, his own, and he died the suffering.  Two years ago we had a long and 
serious talk with him, and he dwelt on the fact that he could not shake that 
feeling off.  We asked him if he did not know that it affected his physical 
wellbeing.  He said he did so and said, "Smith, I do not expect to live any 
great length of time, and you, although much older than I am, will write my 
obituary, and when you do, be sure and say my death was caused by the strong 
feelings that really obsess me.  I cannot endure disappointment nor breach of 
faith."  

He was a leading candidate for United States Senator and expected the backing 
of the so-called labor [?], and he deserved it.  When he was sat on by the 
people he had labored and suffered for, we felt that his physical condition 
would not survive it, and we believe that Ironwood has lost one of her hardest 
worked men and that he died a victim to his strong feelings, although 
physicians have diagnosed it as something differed.

James A. O'Neill died years before his time, and it does not pay anyone to 
give way to strong passions or feelings.  If he would have willed to have 
fought off such feelings, he would have still been a vigorous specimen of 
upstanding manhood.
Wm. Smith in the Keweenaw Miner

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