Where Are They Buried? (12 page)

In 1926 Charles Lindbergh was flying a regular mail route between Chicago and St. Louis and, in those lonely hours, resolved to pursue the yet unclaimed $25,000 prize that had been offered in 1919 to the first aviator who flew nonstop between New York and Paris. Since its inception, the well-publicized challenge had been a sort of national obsession, and had captured the imagination of the American public. But, frustratingly, though there were plenty of front-page accounts glorifying the pioneers who set off to claim the prize, there had never been an exciting story of success. French aviators would fly out of Paris and crash-land in England, American fliers would be forced back to New York after encountering bad weather, and many pilots from both sides of the Atlantic simply took off and were never heard from again.

Charles had his own ideas about how to successfully cross the Atlantic. Unlike most of his contemporaries, he believed the passage should be flown alone, and he was also convinced that an airplane capable of crossing the Atlantic Ocean simply did not exist—it would have to be built. After enlisting the financial aid of a few St. Louis businessmen, he hired the Ryan Airplane company in San Diego to build him a plane for the crossing, and when it was ready two months later, Charles flew it to New York in preparation for his Paris flight.

Charles’ plane, the
Spirit of St. Louis
, was designed expressly to fly across the Atlantic. Described as a “two-ton flying gas tank,” every possible accommodation was sacrificed for better fuel economy: There was no radio and no brakes, a small periscope replaced a forward-facing windshield, and Charles wore no parachute. For food, he brought five sandwiches. “If I get to Paris, I won’t need any more and if I don’t get to Paris, I won’t need any more, either,” he noted dryly. There was no room for error.

May 21, 1927, the
Spirit of St. Louis
landed in Paris. Charles’ singular accomplishment electrified the world, and he immediately embarked on a goodwill tour of some two dozen countries. During a visit to Mexico he first met the aspiring writer Anne Morrow, daughter of Dwight M. Morrow, a former U.S. Senator and then-ambassador to Mexico. In 1929 the two were wed.

In 1932 the Lindberghs made headlines anew when their toddler son, Charles Jr., was snatched from his nursery at their Hopewell, New Jersey, home. A kidnapper left a note demanding $50,000 and after corresponding with the kidnapper through newspaper classifieds and an intermediary, the ransom money was delivered to a Bronx cemetery. But their baby was never returned. Instead he was found two months later, dead, near the Lindbergh home. Bruno Hauptmann was eventually arrested for the crime after he passed some of the ransom money at a gas station, and, after a sensational trial, he was found guilty and went to the electric chair in 1936.

To escape media attention after the trial, the Lindberghs moved to England, and upon their return in 1939, Charles became spokesperson for the America First Committee, a group that
opposed American entry into World War II. Charles’ position put him at odds with President Roosevelt and ordinary Americans questioned his loyalty. They were particularly repelled by his vocal anti-Semitic stance. In response, Charles resigned his Air Corps commission, but then Pearl Harbor changed everything. In 1942 Charles asked to be reinstated into the Air Corps, but Roosevelt staunchly refused. Charles worked as an advisor at Henry Ford’s B-24 bomber plant in Willow Run, instead. After the war, the public generally forgot about, or at least overlooked, Charles’ prewar shenanigans.

During their marriage, Anne had come into fame of her own. In the 1930s the couple had worked together as commercial air flight surveyors and, during a pioneering flight from Canada to China, she had served as Charles’ copilot. A meticulous documentarian, Anne related the story of that adventure in her first book,
North to the Orient
, which became a bestseller, as did the other dozen titles she’d write. In 1954 Charles’ book,
Spirit of St. Louis
, detailing his famous transatlantic flight and largely written by Anne, won a Pulitzer Prize. In 1956, Anne authored one of the landmark bestsellers of the century,
Gift From the Sea
, a reflection on women’s lives and their struggle for identity. It spent 47 weeks as the best-selling book in the nation and, almost 60 years after its release, has never gone out of print.

In their twilight years, the Lindberghs continued to fly, though mostly for pleasure. Charles died of cancer at 72, on August 26, 1974, in their home on the Hawaiian island of Maui. After Charles’ death, Anne began publishing her journals, letters, and memoirs, in part to provide a historical record of aviation and also to end the many misconceptions and fallacies about herself and her husband. After suffering a series of strokes, Anne died at 94 in the company of her family at her daughter’s Vermont home.

Today, Charles’
Spirit of St. Louis
airplane hangs in the atrium of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C.

Before Charles died, he sketched a simple design for his coffin and grave. He was buried under the shade of a java plum tree at Palapala Ho’omao Congregational Church Cemetery in Kipahulu on the Hawaiian island of Maui. His epitaph, Psalm 139:9 – 10, reads,
“If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea.”

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
Kipahulu is in a very remote area of Maui on the southeastern shore. From Kahului, follow Route 360 and, after passing through the town of Hana, start looking for the
41-mile marker. (Note that the markers are descending.) A tenth of a mile past the 41-mile marker, turn left onto a small drive alongside a meadow. Then, after another hundred yards, turn left again. The church and cemetery are a short distance along this drive.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Park in front of the church and walk over to the cemetery on the ocean side of the church. Charles’ grave is located approximately in the cemetery center surrounded by a simple iron chain.

Anne was cremated, and, in accordance with her wishes, her ashes were “scattered over the places she loved.”

Charles Lindbergh Jr., who died at eighteen months, was cremated and his ashes scattered over the Atlantic Ocean.

OCTOBER 2, 1890 – AUGUST 19, 1977

After conquering Broadway in the 1920s, Groucho Marx and his four brothers moved to Hollywood and became a veritable comedy attack force, slinging a wild and anarchic style of humor at movie audiences, the likes of which had never been seen. With his trademark swallow-tailed coat, greasepaint moustache, and rolling, leering, depraved eyes, the intensely verbal Groucho was the key to the brothers’ success in a legendary series of movies highlighted by such pictures as
Animal Crackers
and
A Night at the Opera
.

After the brothers broke up in 1949, Groucho became host of the radio and TV series
You Bet Your Life
and he elevated his quick wit into an art form. On one occasion, he asked a contestant her age and she replied, “I’m approaching 40,” to which Groucho shot back, “From which direction?” On another program, a contestant developed stage fright and was unable to utter a word, to which Groucho delivered the now infamous comment, “Either this man is dead, or my watch is stopped.”

Groucho died of pneumonia at 86 and, after cremation, his ashes were interred at Eden Memorial Park in Mission Hills, California.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
This cemetery is at the corner of Rinaldi Street and Sepulveda Boulevard, just east of the Rinaldi Street exit off I-405.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Enter the park, turn at the first right and park your vehicle. Up the hill on your left is a large mausoleum that is divided into three sections. On the left-hand side of the middle section is the door to a columbarium and, inside at about eye-level, are Groucho’s cremains.

His brothers Chico, Gummo, and Harpo are buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. In 1979, death took the last surviving Marx brother, Zeppo, and he was cremated.

NOVEMBER 22, 1898 – AUGUST 15, 1935

For as long as he could remember, Wiley Post was entranced by flying machines, and he came to be one of the most colorful figures in aviation.

After World War I, Wiley was a roughneck on an Oklahoma oil rig, but he turned to highway robbery and in 1921 was sentenced to ten years in the state penitentiary. Fortunate enough to be paroled the following year, Wiley eased into aviation as a parachutist and worked for a flying circus, where he learned the rudiments of flying from show-pilot friends.

In 1926 Wiley returned to the oil rigs to earn enough money to buy his own plane but during his first day on the job he lost his left eye. He soon regarded this as a blessing because the $1,800 insurance settlement helped purchase his first airplane. The next few years found Wiley traveling to county fairs and carnivals in exhibitions of stunt flying, or barnstorming, as it was known, and in 1930 he achieved national prominence when he won the National Air Race Derby and its $7,500 prize. The following year, with navigator Harold Gatty, he set an around-the-world record, circumnavigating the globe in eight days, and, in 1933 after adding an automatic pilot and a radio compass to his plane, Wiley bested the time by more than twenty hours and became the first solo flyer to circle the earth.

Wiley then turned to high-altitude experiments and, together with the BF Goodrich Company, built the first pressurized flying suit. In this suit, Wiley flew into the stratosphere and discovered the jet stream. He’s regarded as one of space flight’s pioneers, though he lived more than two decades before the establishment of a United States space program.

Back when he was working for the flying circus, Wiley met the famous humorist Will Rogers and through the years the two had become fast friends; while Wiley was employed as the personal pilot of a wealthy Oklahoma oilman he had the opportunity to borrow a plane, and he would sometimes shuttle Will between engagements. By 1935 Wiley had become interested in surveying a mail-and-passenger air route from Seattle to Russia, and the pair planned to scout the route together.

All went as planned until they became lost in bad weather near Point Barrow, Alaska, and were forced to land the pontoon-equipped plane in a lagoon. After asking directions, Wiley tried to take off again, but the engine stalled. The plane plunged into the water and both men were killed instantly.

At 36, Wiley was buried at Memorial Park in Edmond, Oklahoma.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
From Route 77, take the Memorial Road exit and you’ll see the cemetery on the east side of Route 77.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Enter the cemetery, go around the office and proceed back to the flag and mirror pool. Make a right onto the drive after the pool, then stop after another hundred feet. On your left is an opening between two cedar trees, and there you’ll find Wiley’s plot, 30 feet from the drive.

In the late 1950s, well before Las Vegas was a Corporate America theme park, Frank Sinatra summoned four cronies to the Sands Hotel and Casino. Its Copa Room was promptly the hippest place in the universe.

With crooning lover-boy Frank as nominal “chairman,” “the Rat Pack,” became a cult of personalities living the high life of booze, broads, and bright lights. The group consisted of the chairman, himself; the easygoing singer Dean Martin; the one-eyed, singing and dancing wonder-boy Sammy Davis Jr.; the upper-crust, British pretty-boy Peter Lawford; and the stiff-shouldered comic Joey Bishop. They were the new American gods, and Las Vegas was their Mount Olympus.

Their “summit” meetings became the ultimate nightclub act and, while Las Vegas matured in their shadow, the quintet held court at their anything-goes playground. With a confidence and arrogance secured by seemingly all the money in the world, Frank and his swingin’ pals, the culmination of cool, roasted one another with one-liners and belted out the hits of the day, and of days past. Reveling in their heady, bourbon-filled presence, drop-dead gorgeous women squirmed in their midst while starstruck common folk basked in the privilege of proximity.