They are "prizes awarded only to those peoples who fight to win them and then keep fighting eternally to hold them!" At times he was blunt: "I think any man who talks against the interests of his own country ought to be arrested and put in jail, not excepting senators and colonels." Everyone knew that the colonel in question was Charles Lindbergh. In the late 1940s he called for toughness in dealing with the Soviet Union and did not hesitate to recommend using the atomic bomb in a first strike: "If they can't find anyone else to push the button, I will." He questioned the failure of United Nations forces to use the atomic bomb in Korea. In the 1960s he criticized Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's plans to reduce the ranks of the National Guard and reserves: "Nothing would please Khrushchev better." York and his wife Grace had eight children, six sons and two daughters, most named after American historical figures: Alvin Cullum, Jr. (1921–83), George Edward Buxton (1923–2018), Woodrow Wilson (1925–1998), Sam Houston (1928–1929), Andrew Jackson (1930—), Betsy Ross (1933– ), Mary Alice (1935–1991), and Thomas Jefferson (1938–72). His son, Thomas Jefferson was killed in the line of duty on May 7, 1972, while serving as a Constable in Fentress County, Tennessee. York suffered from health problems throughout his life. He had gallbladder surgery in the late 1920s and suffered from pneumonia in 1942. Described in 1919 as a "red-haired giant with the ruddy complexion of the outdoors" and "standing more than 6 feet ... and tipping the scale at more than 200 pounds", by 1945 he weighed 250 pounds and in 1948 he had a stroke. More strokes and another case of pneumonia followed, and he was confined to bed from 1954, further handicapped by failing eyesight. He was hospitalized several times during his last two years. York died at the Veterans Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee, on September 2, 1964, of a cerebral hemorrhage at age 76. After a funeral service in his Jamestown church, with Gen. Matthew Ridgway representing President Lyndon Johnson, York was buried at the Wolf River Cemetery in Pall Mall. His funeral sermon was delivered by Richard G. Humble, General Superintendent of the Churches of Christ in Christian Union. Humble also preached Mrs. York's funeral sermon in 1984. Beginning soon after York's return to the United States at the end of the war, doubt and controversy periodically surfaced over whether the events detailed in his Medal of Honor documents had taken place as officially described, and whether other soldiers in York's unit should also have been recognized for their heroism.