Where Are They Buried? (35 page)

In an odd twist it was learned that Robert had actually taken pictures of Dana as she lay dying because he thought she was “snoring funny.” Family members requested that Dana be autopsied to find out if perhaps foul play was involved—after all, it didn’t seem that someone’s death rattle could be mistaken for an odd snore. An autopsy and an investigation were conducted but authorities found no evidence of foul play.

Dana’s death was ultimately ruled a suicide by multi-drug intoxication.

She was cremated and her ashes scattered in the Pacific Ocean.

OCTOBER 19, 1932 – MAY 12, 1992

Robert Reed was a classically trained actor whose early credits included starring roles in a number of Broadway productions, most notably
Barefoot in the Park
. His TV acting debut came in 1961, playing a young attorney in the courtroom drama
The Defenders
.

As part of Paramount’s stable of contract players, in 1969 Robert was cast as the quintessential family man, Mike Brady, in the sitcom
The Brady Bunch
. But as a dramatic actor, he often lacked enthusiasm for the role and wasn’t always comfortable with the show’s gags and gimmicks. Still,
The Brady Bunch
and its syrupy, albeit charming, view of suburban family life enjoyed a successful, five-year run. It was cancelled when the Brady child actors physically outgrew their roles but since then, through endless syndication, the popularity of the series has swelled to a phenomenal level.

Few were aware of it but, as loving husband Mike Brady, Robert was a bit out of his element. “I’m not a family man,” he once confessed.

Indeed. When Robert died of colon cancer at 59, television’s tawdry sleuth Geraldo Rivera obtained a copy of his death certificate and learned that AIDS had been a “significant condition contributing to (Robert’s) death.” Geraldo tracked down a few of Robert’s long-time confidants, including a bartender who waited on Robert for 30 years at a gay nightspot and, on his
Now It Can be Told
tabloid television show, Geraldo announced that Robert had been gay. Some called Geraldo’s tactics unconscionable and others made comments that can’t be reprinted here, but the point is, everyone listened. Finally, it all made sense.

Convinced that his career would be ruined if it became known that he was gay, Robert had lived a lonely life of one-night stands with sex-for-hire partners. Remote and standoffish, he became an expert at small talk and effortlessly deflected innocent inquiries about his personal life. Robert so effectively kept his homosexuality a secret that even most
Brady
cast members were blindsided by the development.

At 59, Robert was buried at Memorial Park Cemetery in Skokie, Illinois.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
From I-94, take Exit 37B and follow Dempster Street (Route 58) east to the first traffic light. Turn left
onto Gross Point Road and the cemetery is ahead about two miles on the left.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Enter the cemetery, turn left after the office and follow this drive for several hundred yards. On the right you’ll see the Memento Mori Chapel and then, on the left, is a sign marking the “1-9 Annex” section. Turn left just before this section and look for the Ayersman stone on your right. Robert’s grave is nine rows behind the Ayersman plot.

SEPTEMBER 25, 1952 – OCTOBER 10, 2004

MARCH 17, 1961 – MARCH 6, 2006

The tall square-jawed actor Christopher Reeve was perfectly suited for his big-screen role as the “Man of Steel” and millions of fans will always remember him as cinema’s modern-day Superman. But to countless others, Christopher is renowned more for real-life heroics and inspiration, a powerful proponent who encouraged scientists and politicians to work together in developing cures for neurological disorders.

After graduating from Cornell and studying at Juilliard, where he roomed with Robin Williams, Christopher made his Broadway debut as Katharine Hepburn’s grandson in
A Matter of Gravity
. Soon came an offer of a screen test for the starring role in a big-screen revival of what would prove to be the blockbuster movie of 1978,
Superman
. Nailing the test, the relatively unknown actor won the part and, by the time of the third sequel in the chart-busting series nine years later, the strapping actor had become a major box-office draw. Maturing immeasurably, he won audiences’ respect not only for his role as the famous action hero, but also for work between
Superman
sequels, most particularly as a love-struck time-traveler opposite Jane Seymour in the cult-classic
Somewhere in Time
.

By the late 1980s Christopher had grown weary of the Hollywood lifestyle and relocated to Massachusetts, closer to his roots. There he met a singer named Dana Morosini and they were wed in 1992.

A superb athlete, Christopher was an accomplished sailor, skier, and scuba diver and, after earning his pilot’s license at 24, flew solo across the Atlantic twice in a small plane. By the 1990s, horses
had become his passion and, in May 1995, he was taking part in a jumping competition when his horse, Eastern Express, balked and threw him. Christopher landed headfirst and his spinal cord was damaged high in his neck. The signals to keep his body alive were instantly cut off; he couldn’t move his limbs, feel his body, or breathe. Prompt medical attention saved his life, but he was now a quadriplegic.

In the days after the accident he contemplated suicide, but was dissuaded after Dana promised, “I’ll be with you for the long haul, no matter what. You’re still you. And I love you.” And, for her part, Dana, who had appeared Off-Broadway and on New York–based television shows in pursuit of her own acting career, put her ambitions aside and assumed the role of devoted caregiver.

Together they turned the Reeve celebrity into a legacy, crisscrossing the country with an entourage of nurses and advocating for the disabled and handicapped. Especially wrenching were Christopher’s appearances on Capitol Hill in which the wheelchair-bound, former athlete pleaded with political leaders to pass legislation allowing the use of embryonic stem cells in research so that maybe, just maybe, he and others like him could walk again.

Later as Christopher’s condition stabilized and his capacity for the routines of his new life situation became more familiar, he returned to work and directed 1997’s
In the Gloaming
. Then, returning to acting the next year, he won a Screen Actors Guild award for his role as a man in a wheelchair who becomes convinced a neighbor has been murdered in a modern version of the Hitchcock thriller,
Rear Window
. Dana caught the performance bug again, too. She co-hosted the daily talk show
Lifetime Live
and earned acting credits on
Law & Order
and
All My Children
as well.

After developing a systemic infection from a pressure wound, which is a common complication for people living with paralysis, Christopher died of cardiac arrest at 52. After his death, Dana succeeded him as chairwoman of the Christopher Reeve Foundation which funds research on paralysis and works to improve the life of the disabled.

In a heartbreaking twist of fate, less than a year after Christopher’s passing, Dana publicly announced that she had been diagnosed with lung cancer despite having never smoked a day in her life. Though a sympathetic public rallied around Dana and she wore a brave face in spite of her grim prognosis, it seems too that perhaps she had grown weary of the calamities that befell her family: “It’s another journey,” she said. “And I’m ready to be finished with the journeys.” Seven months later her journey finished. Dana
and Christopher were each cremated and their ashes remain with their families.

JANUARY 5, 1914 – JUNE 16, 1959

Though George Reeves was an accomplished film and play actor, he’s certainly best known for his role as the original Superman during the six-season run of the 1950s television series. But unlike the invincible hero he portrayed, George was mortal and, at 45 years old, just three days before he was to be wed to fiancée Lenore Lemmon, he was killed by a single gunshot wound to the head. His death has been the subject of endless speculation because, though police have always considered his demise a suicide, there are a number of puzzling factors.

On the evening of his death, George was entertaining his fiancée and a few friends in his lavish Hollywood home when he reportedly felt tired and went upstairs by himself to his bedroom. After about 30 minutes, the guests heard a gunshot and George was found dead, sprawled nude on his bed with a bullet hole in his right temple. The death was ruled a suicide because the houseguests could provide no other explanation, and there was no sign of an intruder or forced entry.

However, no suicide note was found and, when George was lifted from the bed by authorities, the bullet’s shell casing was found to be
under
him. Furthermore, the gun was found on the floor between his feet, and no fingerprints were found on it. There were no powder burns on his head wound, implying that the gun was held at least several inches from his head at the time it was fired, which is unusual for a suicide, and the police were not called for at least a half an hour after the death.

George was cremated and his ashes interred at Mountain View Cemetery in Altadena, California.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
From I-210, take the Fair Oaks Avenue exit, proceed north for 2½ miles and the cemetery is on the right.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Enter the cemetery, bear right, and, at the first opportunity, turn right again. Park in the lot and walk into the Pasadena Mausoleum, then turn immediately left into the columbarium. George’s ashes rest in the seventh niche on the right, at about waist height.

SEPTEMBER 17, 1948 – SEPTEMBER 11, 2003

Born into show business as the son of singing cowboy star Tex Ritter and actress Dorothy Fay, the student body president and class clown of Hollywood High School spent his summers touring fairgrounds and rodeos where his father performed.

Graduating university in 1971 with a degree in drama, John first earned household familiarity with his role as the minister on
The Waltons
. In 1977 though, his star arced when he won a lead role as Jack Tripper, a goofy, closet-heterosexual bachelor with an uncanny knack for pratfalls in the
Three’s Company
sitcom. With Ritter’s character amid two great-looking, curvy roommates living downstairs from their leering landlord and his sex-starved wife, some found the show an empty-headed waste of time but, as a vehicle for sexual innuendo and temptation, it skyrocketed, becoming one of the highest-rated programs in television. John regularly rose above his material and carved an identity prompting movie roles including
Sling Blade
and
Problem Child
. In 2002 his career enjoyed a major resurgence as he played the starring role of Paul Hennessey in the family sitcom
8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter.

One day on the set, John felt nauseous and lightheaded so he relaxed in his dressing room for a while. Feeling worse a few hours later, and now vomiting too, he was rushed to the hospital across the street—in fact, the very hospital where he had been born almost fifty-five years earlier. Tests showed abnormalities consistent with a heart attack and doctors ordered anticoagulants and planned a cardiac catheterization. But John’s condition only worsened and it was then learned he had suffered an aortic dissection, a tear in the heart’s chief aorta. A “Code Blue” was sounded and, though doctors worked feverishly, they ultimately were unsuccessful in saving the actor’s life.

He was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Hollywood Hills, California.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
From Highway 134, which is the connector between Highway 101 and I-210, take the Forest Lawn Drive exit. Proceed west for a mile and the park’s entrance will be on the left.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Get a map from the information booth and drive to the Gardens of Heritage, which are across the drive from the Old North Church. Walk up two levels behind the statue of Washington, turn right and go through the door in the stone wall into the next garden. Around the other side of the low stone wall on your left, John’s grave is in the lawn at Number 1622.

AUGUST 19, 1921 – OCTOBER 24, 1991

As a decorated B-17 pilot who flew 89 combat missions during World War II, Gene Roddenberry’s stories and essays written during spare moments in the South Pacific were published in newspapers and magazines. After the war, Gene studied literature at Columbia University and became a commercial airline pilot for Pan Am. But in 1948, after an engine fire forced Gene to crash-land into the Syrian desert, killing 38 of the craft’s 46 passengers, he decided to pursue writing full-time. Gene moved to Los Angeles and, supplementing his initially meager income by working for the LAPD as department spokesman, Gene eventually attracted interest in his screenplays.

By 1953, Gene had left the LAPD and was writing full-time. He sold scripts for numerous television productions, including
Dragnet
and
Goodyear Theater
and, as head writer for
Have Gun Will Travel
, Gene won an Emmy. For four years beginning in 1960, Gene produced
The Lieutenant
, which spawned the wildly popular boy’s doll, G.I. Joe. Despite all these accomplishments, though, Gene will be forever remembered for taking generations of viewers on a journey into “space, the final frontier” as creator and producer of the television series
Star Trek
.

As a science-fiction devotee, Gene saw similarities between space explorers and American pioneers, and he envisioned a science-fiction television series that would feature continuing characters just as the popular
Wagon Train
Western series had. In 1966, Gene presented his idea of a “wagon train to the stars” to a culture whose schoolchildren practiced nuclear attack drills and whose World’s Doomsday Clock was set at just twelve minutes to midnight.
Star Trek
initiated the notion that anything was possible, fearsome technologies had righteous worth, man was inherently noble, the future was full of hope, and both the horizon and our destiny were infinite.