and to allow Nixon to focus on other matters in the first months of his presidency. Nixon did not solicit Warren's opinion regarding the next chief justice and ultimately appointed the conservative federal appellate judge Warren E. Burger. Warren later regretted his decision to retire and reflected, "If I had ever known what was going to happen to this country and this Court, I never would have resigned. They would have had to carry me out of there on a plank." In addition, he later remarked on his retirement and on the Warren Court, "I would like the Court to be remembered as the people's court." Final years and death After stepping down from the Court, Warren began working on his memoirs and took numerous speaking engagements. He also advocated for an end to the Vietnam War and the elimination of poverty. He avoided publicly criticizing the Burger Court, but was privately distressed by the Court's increasingly conservative holdings. He closely followed investigations into the Watergate scandal, a major political scandal that stemmed from a break-in of the Democratic National Committee's headquarters and the Nixon administration's subsequent attempts to cover up that break-in. Warren continued to hold Nixon in low regard, privately stating that Nixon was "perhaps the most despicable president that this country has ever had." Five years into retirement, Warren died due to cardiac arrest at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D.C., at 8:10 p.m. on July 9, 1974 at the age of 83. He had been hospitalized since July 2 due to congestive heart failure and coronary insufficiency. On that same day, he was visited by Justices Brennan and Douglas, until 5:30 p.m. Warren could not resist asking his friends whether the Court would order President Nixon to release the sixty-four tapes demanded by the Watergate investigation. Both justices assured him that the court had voted unanimously in United States v. Nixon for the release of the tapes. Relieved, Warren died just a few hours later, safe in the knowledge that the Court he had so loved would force justice on the man who had been his most bitter foe. Warren had his wife and one of his daughters, Nina Elizabeth Brien, at his bedside when he passed away. After he lay in repose in the Great Hall of the United States Supreme Court Building, his funeral was held at Washington National Cathedral, and he was interred