In 1979, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and on August 5, 1982, he died in Norton County Hospital from it. He was buried in Norton, Kansas. Family Sebelius married Elizabeth Adeline Roberts and had two children with her, R. Douglas Sebelius and K. Gary Sebelius, before his death in 1982. In 1974, K. Gary Sebelius married Kathleen Sebelius, the daughter of former Ohio Governor John J. Gilligan. She would later serve as the governor of Kansas from 2003 to 2009, and as United States Secretary of Health and Human Services. Political positions Domestic Sebelius introduced a constitutional amendment to legalize voluntary prayer in public buildings in 1971, but no action was taken on it. In April 1971, Kansas held a voter referendum to lower the voting age, which he supported; he later voted in favor of the Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution. He criticized Nixon's decision to sell 10 million tons of United States grain to the Soviet Union at subsidized prices and later called for the resignation of Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz. When the House of Representatives voted on recognizing a holiday in honor of Martin Luther King Jr., Sebelius was one of the forty-eight representatives who abstained from the vote. Foreign In October 1969, he asked for his name to be removed from a letter created by Representative Sam Steiger to President Richard Nixon asking Nixon to point out to the North Vietnamese that the United States would not rule out any military option in gaining peace with honor, as the wording of the letter promoted an escalation of the war. On July 18, 1973, he voted against the War Powers Resolution; after Nixon vetoed the bill Sebelius voted against the overriding of it on November 7, but the House and Senate voted to override Nixon's veto. On July 31, 1973, Sebelius voted in favor of a bill that would decrease the United States' military presence overseas by 100,000 and create a cap of 400,000 troops, but it was defeated by a vote of 243 to 163. Electoral history References External links 1916 births 1982 deaths 20th-century American lawyers 20th-century American politicians Deaths from cancer in Kansas Deaths from prostate cancer George Washington University Law School alumni Kansas city council members Kansas lawyers Republican Party Kansas state senators Mayors of places in Kansas Military personnel from Kansas People from Norton, Kansas Republican Party members