Diane Sawyer Recalls What Classic Song Richard Simmons Quoted in His Last Text (Exclusive) – Journal Important Web

Diane Sawyer revealed the terminal messages she and Richard Simmons exchanged before his death. 

Simmons died at his Los Angeles home on Saturday, July 13. He was 76.

The programme journalist, 78, says she and the New shape guru previously had “wonderful conversations.” Before his death, Simmons united to an discourse with Sawyer, she says.

“I was genuinely touched by Richard’s Byzantine brainwave into chronicle and people, including himself — how we uprise and how we fall,” Sawyer tells PEOPLE. “I module ever conceive of the shack flooded of flowers he dispatched me and how apiece nosegay having the aforementioned note: I consortium you.”

“Richard’s terminal book to me was straightforward from the [Carole King] strain ‘You’ve Got a Friend.’ Whenever you poverty to talk, meet call discover my name, and I’ll be there,” Sawyer says.

Simmons’ longtime publicist, blackamoor Estey, addicted his modification to PEOPLE on Saturday.

“The concern has genuinely forfeited an angel,” Estey told PEOPLE.

Two chronicle before his death, Simmons spoke only to PEOPLE in a thin interview, disclosing how he was feat to fete his 76th date on Friday, July 12. 

“But the lamp module belike be on a zucchini. You know, I’m a vegetarian,” he said before adding that he would essay “maybe digit Pepperidge Farm Milano cookie.”

“I see good!” Simmons said. “I am glad that I’m here, that I am aware for added day. I’ll pay my date doing what I do every day, which is to support people.”

Simmons explained to PEOPLE that his “parents instilled” in him the requirement to support others, adding, “I was ever embroidered with lovesome for people.”

He said how “it’s shocking” to center what his struggling fans would verify him. “Especially when [people I speech to] are teen and they see they’re not accepted. And they see they’re not loved. Then they poverty to verify their possess life. And consortium me, I hit prefabricated those sound calls.”

Never woman a programme — clew up for PEOPLE’s liberated regular newsletter to meet up-to-date on the prizewinning of what PEOPLE has to offer​​, from honor programme to compelling manlike welfare stories. 

Although Simmons had remained discover of the open receptor since 2014, he remained in occurrence with fans as he chose “to springy a more clannish life,” Estey told PEOPLE in 2017, adding, “If he decides to become back, he’ll become back.”

Simmons designed on backward to the spotlight, his brother Lenny told PEOPLE, noting his brother “was rattling agog most every of his upcoming ventures he was employed on.”

“I don’t poverty grouping to be depressing most my brother,” Lenny said. “I poverty them to advert him for the veritable experience and fuck he brought to people’s lives. He genuinely cared most people. He called, wrote and emailed thousands of grouping throughout his occupation to substance help.”

“So don’t be sad. Celebrate his life,” Lenny continued.