When Frank Sinatra Died There Was Drama, Lots Of Drama. Would We Have Expected Anything Less?

Daniel Holland
Oct 23, 2022
5 min read

Updated: 2 days ago

Man in blue sweater with cross necklace speaks into mic; elderly couple beside him. Text: "Sinatra's Final Days And The Drama That Followed."

There is a small moment from the final week of Frank Sinatra’s life that has often been repeated because of its gentle humanity. In early May 1998, Sinatra asked his daughter Tina how long it would be until the new millennium. As the biography Sinatra: The Life recounts, she told him it was about eighteen months away, and he replied, “Oh, I can do that. Nothin’ to it.”

It was a simple exchange, the sort families have every day. Within days, he had died.

A Slow Decline Rather Than A Sudden Event

Sinatra’s health had been gradually deteriorating for several years. PBS later noted that he was living with a combination of breathing problems, high blood pressure, pneumonia, bladder cancer, and dementia during the 1990s. After a heart attack in January 1997, he withdrew from public life almost completely. The man who had once performed to sold out venues across the world now spent most days at home, cared for by medical staff and those closest to him.

Despite this, those around him sometimes tried to keep the atmosphere optimistic. Only a month before his death, his wife Barbara told the Las Vegas Sun,

“The rumours are just crazy. You can’t believe it. He’s doing very well… He’s strong and walking around. We’re enjoying friends.”

Her comments reflected a desire to protect his privacy rather than to mislead, though insiders later acknowledged that his health was fragile.

The Evening Of 14 May 1998

On the night of 14 May, Sinatra suffered another heart attack at his Los Angeles home. An ambulance transported him to Cedars Sinai Medical Center. Later reports often noted that the journey was unusually quick because many people were indoors watching the finale of the television series Seinfeld, leaving the roads quieter than usual.

Barbara contacted his manager, Tony Oppedisano, who arrived at the hospital while medical staff were attending to the singer. Oppedisano later told the Mirror, as quoted by Far Out Magazine, “His two doctors and a number of technicians were surrounding him when I walked in. I sat by him and held his hand, trying to keep him calm.”

Barbara joined them and encouraged him to keep fighting. According to Oppedisano, Sinatra managed to respond, though speaking was difficult due to his breathing issues. His final words were reported as, “I’m losing.”

Oppedisano described the moment as one of acceptance rather than fear, saying, “He wasn’t panicked. He was just resigned to the fact that he had given it his best but he wasn’t going to come through.”

Sinatra was pronounced dead at 10.50 p.m.

A Family Notified Too Late

Family members were informed shortly afterwards. Tina later said she received the call at about 11.10 p.m. The speed of events, and the fact that they had not been contacted earlier in the evening, caused significant upset.

Newspaper reports initially stated that his children had been at his bedside. In time, they publicly corrected this. Sinatra’s daughters Nancy and Tina both expressed that they had not been given the chance to reach the hospital before he died. Nancy later said, “We did not know until after he was dead and we were five minutes from the hospital.”

This moment deepened existing disagreements between Sinatra’s children and their stepmother Barbara, creating a distance that has largely remained.

A Funeral Rooted In Familiar Rituals

Despite the tensions, the family organised a funeral that reflected Sinatra’s long life and the small habits and preferences that had accompanied him through it. His children placed several of his favoured items in his casket. These included Tootsie Rolls, Camel cigarettes, a Zippo lighter, and a bottle of Jack Daniels.

Tina added ten dimes to his pocket, a habit he had kept since the 1963 kidnapping of his son Frank Jr., when difficulty finding coins for telephone calls had made an already distressing ordeal more complicated. From that point on, Sinatra kept spare change with him wherever he went.

The funeral included eulogies from Frank Sinatra Jr., Kirk Douglas, Gregory Peck, and Robert Wagner. At the end of the service, one of Sinatra’s signature recordings, “Put Your Dreams Away”, was played.

His Resting Place

Sinatra was buried at Desert Memorial Park in Cathedral City, California. His original gravestone carried the inscriptions “The Best Is Yet To Come” and “Beloved Husband and Father”. These words were chosen to reflect themes he valued throughout his life: optimism, continuity, and family identity.

In 2020, Palm Springs Life reported that the grave was vandalised, with part of the word “Husband” damaged. The family opted to replace the stone entirely, choosing a simpler inscription: “Sleep Warm, Poppa.” This gentler phrase, drawn from family use, gives the grave a quieter and more personal tone.

Sinatra's original gravestone before it was vandalised

The Broader Context Of His Final Years

Sinatra’s final decade was marked by a gradual retreat from public activity. Friends recalled quieter evenings, conversations about old colleagues, and a growing dependence on familiar routines. While his memory became inconsistent, there were still moments where his well known wit appeared, often surprising those around him.

His home life, particularly in Palm Springs, became the centre of his days. Visitors described a household that balanced medical needs with attempts to maintain normality. The singer who had spent decades on stages, film sets, and large social occasions now found solace in smaller interactions and private comforts.

His Last Words In Perspective

Although Sinatra’s final words have often been quoted, those who knew him were careful to point out that they should not be interpreted dramatically. They reflected a man aware of the seriousness of his condition and realistic about the outcome. Acceptance, rather than fear, appears to have characterised his final moments.

The story of Sinatra’s death is therefore not one of spectacle, but of an ageing man reaching the end of a long and exceptionally full life, surrounded by those closest to him. The family disagreements that followed were rooted not in theatrics, but in a sense of having arrived too late for a moment that mattered deeply to them.

Today, visitors to his grave often leave small tokens. Coins, pebbles, and notes appear beside the headstone, gestures that echo the quiet habits and symbols that meant so much to him during his lifetime.

Bono, the lead singer of U2, said of the singer after his death: “Frank Sinatra was the 20th century, he was modern, he was complex, he had swing, and he had attitude. He was the boss, but he was always Frank Sinatra. We won’t see his like again.”