Where Are They Buried? (100 page)

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Enter the cemetery, bear left at the “T” and head up the hill. At the first intersection, bear left at the Lowes mausoleum and then turn right at the Staniland mausoleum. Stop at the Phillips mausoleum on the left. The Wrights are in this section, about 50 feet behind Phillips.

MAY 19, 1925 – FEBRUARY 21, 1965

MAY 28, 1936 – JUNE 23, 1997

Malcolm X’s father was an outspoken supporter of black leaders long before “civil rights” became a buzzword. As
a result, the family was harassed by vigilante groups and Malcolm’s father eventually ended up on streetcar tracks with a crushed skull and a body nearly severed in half, though the death was ruled accidental.

Malcolm was sent to prison for burglary in 1946, and it was there that he converted to the Black Muslim faith, the Nation of Islam. By the time of his 1952 parole, he wholeheartedly embraced the faith’s beliefs and tirelessly championed its basic argument that evil is an inherent characteristic of the white man’s world. He believed that in order to flourish blacks had to completely separate themselves from white civilization. Malcolm was soon ordained a minister, and in 1956 he met his future wife, Betty, who had also taken the last name “X,” as many Nation of Islam followers do—it represents an African family name that can never be known.

Throughout the 1950s and into the early 1960s Malcolm developed a brilliant platform style and, with bitter eloquence, took the Nation of Islam from an insignificant splinter group to an organization that boasted thousands of official members and an untold number of sympathizers. By far the Nation of Islam’s most effective and prominent preacher, Malcolm was in almost constant demand on college campuses, where he derided the civil-rights movement and rejected integration and racial equality, calling instead for black separatism and the taking up of arms against whites. This message was the opposite of the nonviolent approach that activists such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preached and, as a result of this militant stance, many whites viewed Malcolm with fear and contempt, while many blacks distanced themselves from his tirades.

As Malcolm became increasingly famous, he provoked tension and jealousy among the Nation of Islam leaders. Its founder, Elijah Muhammad, sought to rid himself of the formidable threat to his own power. After Malcolm described John F. Kennedy’s assassination as a “case of chickens coming home to roost,” Muhammad suspended his protégé from the faith.

In 1964 Malcolm followed a pilgrimage to Mecca with a prolonged period of study in the Middle East, where he was impressed by the sight of people of all races coming together in the name of Islam. He returned to the United States a changed man, proclaimed himself a convert to orthodox Islam, adopted a new name, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, and fostered a new philosophy known as Black Consciousness encouraging blacks to share their racial and cultural heritage.

Malcolm no longer accepted that white people were evil, and he became critical of the now-rival Nation of Islam, condemning its ideas as counterproductive; it was economics, not color, that kept blacks from succeeding, the new Malcolm insisted. Further, Malcolm raised questions about Nation of Islam financial irregularities, and denounced Elijah Muhammad as a fake and an immoral philanderer. As the two sides traded accusations, the conflict escalated into outright violence and death threats were recorded.

While preparing for an address at Harlem’s Audubon Ballroom in February 1965, Malcolm X was ambushed and died after being shot more than a dozen times. Though his three assassins had ties to the Nation of Islam, they insisted someone else had paid them. Nonetheless, they were convicted of the murder and sentenced to life in prison.

After her husband’s death, Betty Shabazz earned a doctorate in education and traveled widely to speak on civil rights and racial tolerance. In 1994 she spoke publicly about a long-held suspicion that Louis Farrakhan, the current leader of the Nation of Islam, had been behind the assassination of her husband, and a year later, her daughter Qubilah was charged with trying to hire a hit man to kill Farrakhan. Qubilah avoided prosecution by agreeing to accept responsibility for her conduct and completing treatment for alcohol and psychiatric problems, while Betty reconciled with Farrakhan at a fundraiser for her daughter’s defense.

In June 1997 Betty died after being severely burned in a fire started by her twelve-year-old grandson (Qubilah’s son), reportedly set because he was unhappy that he had been sent to live with her.

Malcolm X and Betty are buried side by side at Ferncliffe Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
From I-87, take Exit 7 in Ardsley and follow Route 9A north for 1G miles. Then, at the traffic light, turn right onto Secor Road and the Ferncliffe Cemetery is a short distance ahead on the left.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Enter Ferncliffe at the third entrance and bear right. On the left at the top of the paved loop is the Pinewood section. Drive about I of the way around the loop and stop at the rough and narrow path on the left. Four rows from the road and ten rows from the path are the graves of Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz at marker number 150.

DECEMBER 13, 1887 – SEPTEMBER 2, 1964

Alvin York hailed from the backwaters of Tennessee where he and his family scraped out a living and supplemented their dinner table through hunting. In his small world, Alvin was well known as a drinker and gambler and general nuisance, but after an epiphany at 26 he turned his life around. He became a member of the Church of Christ, a teacher in the Sunday school, and leader of the choir.

Three years later, in 1917, the United States joined the war against Germany and Alvin’s faith was tested when he received a draft notice. Following the church’s teachings, Alvin returned the notice with the words “Dont want to Fight” scrawled across the back. However, his case was denied because his church did not expressly prohibit killing during war, and Alvin reluctantly reported to basic training, where he distinguished himself as an expert marksman.

In the Argonne Forest in October of 1918, Alvin and sixteen other soldiers mistakenly wound up behind enemy lines and surprised a number of German troops eating breakfast. A brief firefight ensued and resulted in the unexpected surrender of a superior German force to the seventeen men. But once the Germans realized that the American contingent was limited, another squad of German machine-gunners on a nearby hill was alerted and opened fire on the Americans, as well as on their own troops, who had just surrendered. Ordered to silence the machine guns, the marksman Alvin picked off at least a dozen of the Germans on the hill, and in short order they, too, chose to surrender. By the time York and his men, now numbering just nine, reached the safety of the American lines they had captured 132 Germans. Word quickly spread that York had single-handedly “captured the whole German army.”

Upon returning to America, Sergeant York was issued the Medal of Honor and showered with appearance and endorsement offers. He soon began using his popularity to raise money for a school for underprivileged children and, in 1927, the Alvin C. York Institute was established. It later became a special part of the Tennessee school system.

Alvin’s hero status matured to its fullest in the years during World War II, when his story from the previous war was made into a top-grossing movie,
Sergeant York
. Twenty years later, such
status mattered little when the Internal Revenue Service pursued him for some $170,000 in back taxes and interest owed from the movie royalty income. Partially paralyzed and almost completely blind from a stroke, Alvin was broke and unable to pay the debt, so the American public rallied behind him and established the York Relief Fund. After $130,000 was raised, President Kennedy called the matter “a national disgrace” and ordered it resolved. The IRS settled for $100,000, and the remainder was placed in a trust for the York family.

In a veteran’s hospital, Alvin died at 76 from stroke complications and was buried at Wolf River Cemetery in Pall Mall, Tennessee.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
From I-40, follow Route 127 north for 40 miles toward Pall Mall. After a steep and winding downhill drive just before you reach the village, turn right onto Wolf River Loop. Turn left after the second bridge and the cemetery is a short distance ahead on the right.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Enter at the second entrance and you’ll see Alvin’s grave under the American flag, about 50 yards to the right.

If your personal hero isn’t profiled in this book and you’d like to find his or her resting place, don’t despair. With persistence you can find just about anyone’s grave.

When I first started searching out famous graves, I tried to find them by the most obvious and amateurish means. I ordered copies of death certificates from faraway courthouses, culled old obituaries from microfilm, and painstakingly scoured biographies for clues. But though each course of action held promise at first, no method yielded consistent results: Obituaries often ignore the burial information entirely; death certificates are written when the ultimate disposition of the body is still unknown; and, though some biographies mention their subjects’ resting places, never do they contain the exact burial location. I found a couple books that broached the subject, but they were dated and plagued with errors. Though I was successful in finding a number of cemetery names through one or another of these methods, not once did I obtain concise step-by-step directions to either a cemetery or a grave. It became apparent that I was on my own—and I resolved to develop a fresh technique for locating the graves of the famous.

It seemed clear that the best way to glean the information was from the living. I recognized that every dead person—whether buried, cremated, or shot into space—has left a number of survivors. These run the gamut from friends and relatives to professional associates or even an undertaker—people who have firsthand knowledge of the person’s whereabouts. I simply began to seek those people out and ask them.

I became a sort of after-the-fact detective and, though my inquiries could sometimes be a bit uncomfortable for both parties, I quickly developed a rap, a knack, even, for painlessly getting to the bottom of these matters. Preferring to query the family and friends of the deceased only as a last resort, I started my searches by appealing to funeral homes. First I’d determine the town in which
the person died and then call funeral homes in that area. In large towns, and even in medium-sized cities, almost without exception I’d learn which funeral home had overseen the deceased’s services within two telephone calls. The funerary business is a relatively small and tight-knit industry; any one of the area’s funeral operators would be sure to know which of their crosstown competitors had handled a high-profile affair, and they’d direct me accordingly. From my next call I’d often be able to learn the disposition of the remains.

This sounds simple on paper, and sometimes it was, but I also offer this counsel: To locate a grave successfully through telephone inquiries, you’ll need a colossal reserve of diplomacy and tact, an ability to think quickly, and a fair amount of nerve. But above all, you must be persistent and continue to chip away at whatever obstacles arise. Here are some of the roadblocks that I most commonly encountered, along with some suggestions for their circumvention:

A funeral home operator refuses to divulge the whereabouts of the deceased.
Recognizing their customers’ right to privacy, funeral home proprietors sometimes won’t disclose what became of a client. When this happens, I call the funeral home again later to tactfully get connected to other people who work there—a sales associate, hearse driver, or chief coffin technician, it really doesn’t matter who—and inquire on a more personal basis. It sometimes helps if you have a list of the area’s cemeteries close at hand so, if your contact is reluctant to divulge the information, you can keep them on the phone and perhaps have them “tell” you by process of elimination.

You’ve secured the name of the cemetery, but neither the yellow pages nor the telephone operator have such a listing.
Surprisingly, this happens a lot, and it’s usually for one of three reasons: Either the cemetery name has been changed, the cemetery has no phone because it’s very small, or the cemetery is run by some other administrative agency.

According to the United States Geological Survey, there are some 115,000 cemeteries in the United States. Like every other business (yes, cemeteries are businesses), there has been a lot of consolidation and, sometimes, a number of small adjoining cemeteries are combined into a single large one. The small cemeteries continue to be known by their original names to appease the various denominations but, in a telephone directory, each would no longer have its own listing. In a case like this, call one of the area’s larger cemeteries and ask them if they administer the particular branch in which you are interested.