Hopes rose again when, in July 1963, Dinah married Dick Lane, a defensive back for the Detroit Lions who seemed devoted to her and to as normal a home life as could be arranged by two stars of the sports and music worlds. Plans had been made for a family Christmas in Detroit with Lane's children from a previous marriage when word came of Dinah's death from an overdose of sleeping pills. She had died at home while Lane was in Chicago picking up the children for the trip back to Detroit. The death was ruled accidental, and Lane theorized that Washington had simply forgotten how many of the pills she had taken in her search for desperately needed sleep. She was just 39 at her death. At Dinah Washington's funeral in Chicago, Lane spoke of her ability to reach people of all backgrounds through her music. "It was unbelievable how she could take kings and bring them under her spell," he said, "and she could take the tramp out there in the street and the prostitute and do the same thing." It was Washington's great talent to find her own soul in her music and teach her audiences that it was their soul, too.