? What 's that ? Beach and his wife Monette bought the tainted cantaloupe at a Homeland grocery , where the store motto says : `` the best is fresh . '' A week after he ate the fruit , Beach felt malaise , perhaps not unusual for a man of 87 years . But then his face turned the shade of a tomato . Soon he had trouble breathing and collapsed on the living room floor , according to a wrongful death lawsuit filed against Jensen Farms . Monette heard him struggling to pull himself up off the floor . She hobbled into the room with her cane and saw her husband of 67 years unable to speak , unable to get up . She dialed 911 and an ambulance whisked Beach to Baptist Hospital in nearby Oklahoma City . He was discharged the next day but when he got worse at home , he returned to the hospital . One of Beach 's six daughters , Brenda Hathaway met her father at the emergency room . Beach told her he did n't want Monette to see him this way . Listeriosis causes fever , muscle aches , diarrhea
-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- William Beach was one of those people who fixated on certain foods . He would eat the same thing voraciously for a few days , and then , when he tired of the same tastes , he moved onto something else . In August , when summer 's heat seemed unending in Mustang , Oklahoma , Beach took to savoring fried chicken -- and soft , sweet cantaloupe . Beach was elderly -- 87 -- but after eating the fruit , his health declined rather suddenly and before anyone in his family knew what was wrong , he was dead . He is among 15 people who died from Listeria monocytogenes in what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is calling the deadliest U.S. outbreak of a food-borne illness since 1998 . Gallery : The decade 's 10 biggest food-borne illness outbreaks The bacteria was traced to Rocky Ford cantaloupes grown at Jensen Farms ' fields in Granada , Colorado . As of Monday , the outbreak had affected people in 19 states . The CDC first reported it publicly on September 12 , six days after William Beach 's family buried him . Listeria