Editing Saul Alinsky (section)

== Death and family ==
On June 12, 1972, three months after the publication of the ''Playboy'' interview, Alinsky died, aged 63, from a heart attack while walking near his home in [[Carmel, California]].<ref name=":0"/> 

Alinsky's parents divorced when he was 18. He remained close to his mother, Farah Rice, who survived him. She acknowledged his national notoriety but not his politics. "As a Jewish mother, she begins where other Jewish mothers leave off. . . it was all anti-climatic after I got that college degree."{{sfnp|Norden|1972|p=63}}

Alinsky was married three times. His first wife, Helene Simon, whom he had met at the University of Chicago, drowned in 1947 while trying to save two children. Alinsky mourned her passing for many years.<ref name="VonHoffman">{{Cite book|last=von Hoffman|first=Nicholas|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fApiRP3lLSkC&q=helene|title=Radical: A Portrait of Saul Alinsky|date=June 29, 2010|publisher=[[PublicAffairs]]|isbn=978-1-56858-625-0|location=New York|language=en}}</ref> His second marriage to Jean Graham was also to take a tragic turn. A diagnosis of [[multiple sclerosis]] proved to be the onset of serious mental health problems and led to her hospitalization. Alinsky ended the marriage after several years but maintained regular contact. In the year before his death, he married Irene McInnis. He had two children from his first marriage, Kathryn Wilson and Lee David Alinsky.<ref name="VonHoffman" /><ref>{{cite news|last=Fowle|first=Farnsworth|date=June 13, 1972|title=A Local Agitator|newspaper=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1972/06/13/archives/a-local-agitator.html|access-date=January 21, 2020}}</ref>