A heavy smoker since the age of 14, the American singer and pianist Nat King Cole was diagnosed with lung cancer at the age of 45 and was treated with cobalt therapy. Cole smoked up to 3 packs a day and believed that the habit improved his voice, giving it a deeper, husky, more velvet quality. He once joked, "If I ever quit, I'd be out of the job." Cole's illness reconciled him with his wife, and he vowed that if he recovered he would go on television to urge people to stop smoking. After having his entire left lung surgically removed, he was bound to a wheelchair. On Valentine's Day, 1965, the day before he died, Cole briefly left St. John's Hospital when his wife had her sister drive them by the sea. "There was that beautiful view of Santa Monica," his wife's sister recalls, "and the mountains and the sea and the blue sky. I remember he kept gazing and gazing, and I'll never forget his reaching up and taking my hand in his and saying, "turn me away from the window." It was like he was saying goodbye."
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Song: Nat King Cole - "Autumn Leaves." (1955)
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