Shepard was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia in 1996 and died from complications of the disease in Pebble Beach, California, on July 21, 1998. Among astronauts who had walked on the Moon, he was the second to die (Jim Irwin had been the first, in 1991). Shepard's widow Louise had planned to cremate his remains and scatter the ashes, but before she was able to do that, she herself died from a heart attack—on August 25, 1998, at 17:00, which, coincidentally, was the same time of day at which he had always phoned her when they were apart. They had been married for 53 years. Their family decided to cremate them both, and their ashes were scattered, together, from a Navy helicopter, over Stillwater Cove, in front of their Pebble Beach home.