Where Are They Buried? (45 page)

Animosity between Dian and the poachers reached a boiling point and finally, at age 53, Dian was found dead at her tent compound, her body hacked to death by machete. No arrests were ever made, but conventional wisdom suggests that the killer or killers likely came from the poachers’ ranks.

Fittingly, she was buried in her own Gorilla Graveyard near her beloved friend, Digit.

Dian’s headstone summarizes her life:

Dian Fossey 1932-1985
No one loved gorillas more …

Deep within Africa’s Virunga Mountains, the Karisoke Research Center and its Gorilla Graveyard lie in Rwanda, south of the base of Mount Visoke and Volcanoes National Park, two miles from the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire).

The Center is still supported by the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International and functions as an important base for international research but, in 2001, less than 300 people were
allowed to visit due to the dangers posed by Hutu rebels. In June 1997 the area was closed due to the Rwandan genocide, and when it reopened in July 1999, a number of mountain gorillas were missing or dead. Today there are believed to be about 700 gorillas remaining.

JUNE 30, 1919 – MARCH 14, 1975

In more than fifty films, Susan Hayward’s inspirational roles made her a favorite of female movie fans, and during the 1950s she was one of the most sought-after stars in Hollywood.

Beginning her life as Edith Marrener, Susan created an indelible impression of brassy charm, pert sexiness, and a spirit that met tragedy with defiance in movies like
I Want to Live!
and
Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman
. Her greatest impact was playing real women who dealt with heartbreak and struggle, and endured.

Susan’s personal life mirrored her movies, with many ups and downs: a modeling career started with a lucky break—she walked in the door of an agency just as it received a call for a redhead; a director who saw her picture in a magazine offered her a screen test; she was rejected as costar in
Gone With the Wind
; a bicycle accident cast her onto the lawn of an agent who created her lasting stage name. A gutsy appeal to a convention of film distributors set her career rolling, and she enjoyed public triumph, stardom, and an Oscar. But then, personal tragedy struck: an ugly divorce, a custody battle for her twin sons, and an attempted suicide. Finally, a happy marriage ended tragically when Susan was widowed.

In a final twist, it was discovered in 1973 that Susan had a brain tumor, the same affliction that befell her character in
The Stolen Hours
, and at 55 she died of the ailment.

Susan was buried at the Cemetery of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church in Carrollton, Georgia.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
From I-20, take Exit 4 and follow Route 113 south for four miles to Center Point Road. Turn right, and the church and cemetery are a short distance on the left.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
You won’t miss Susan’s grave in the Chalkey plot with the elaborate stone curved headwall.

APRIL 7, 1915 – JULY 17, 1959

Billie Holiday was born in the Baltimore ghetto, and at age six, when perhaps she should’ve been in school, she was instead working at Alice Dean’s brothel, running errands and scrubbing floors for a living. At ten, she was raped by a neighbor and for that “offense” was sent to a home for wayward girls. By thirteen Billie had surfaced in Harlem and was working as a part-time prostitute.

Fortunately, at around sixteen, it was discovered that she was a bit of a jazz singer, and Billie went from selling her physical talents to her musical ones. She became a fixture of the nightclub scene and in 1932, Columbia talent scout John Hammond (who years later discovered both Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen) heard Billie’s wailings and arranged for her to record a few titles with Benny Goodman’s orchestra.

After recording with Goodman and touring with a number of other popular orchestras over the next few years, Billie had elevated her technique and, despite never having received any technical training, her delicately wavering voice made her the outstanding jazz singer of her day. Billie came to be known as Lady Day, and between 1933 and 1944, she recorded over 200 “sides,” though, egregiously, she never received royalties for any of them.

From 1944 to 1950, Billie recorded with Decca and, with trademark white gardenias fastened in her hair, she turned second-rate love songs into jazz classics. During the mid-1940s, though her demon was knocking at the door, Billie was at an artistic peak. “Singing songs like the ‘The Man I Love’ or ‘Porgy’ is no more work than sitting down and eating Chinese roast duck, and I love roast duck,” she wrote in a 1956 autobiography.

The demon that Billie was dueling was of a familiar variety: She was addicted to heroin and spent much of 1947 in a federal women’s prison in West Virginia for heroin possession. Furthermore, for years after her release, she was refused a New York cabaret license, which she needed in order to sing at the popular clubs that were the fundamental venues of her career.

By 1959, Billie was a physical wreck. She collapsed during a Greenwich Village performance after just two songs and was admitted to a city hospital in Harlem, suffering from cirrhosis and heart trouble. In those sad last days, she was arrested again for heroin possession, on her gurney, after a nurse said she found a foil package of the white powder near her bed. At 44, Billie’s lungs became congested and her heart gave out. When she was removed
from the bed, fifteen $50 bills were found taped to one of her legs, an advance for some autobiographical articles.

Wearing her favorite pink lace stage gown and pink gloves, Billie was buried at St. Raymond’s Cemetery in the Bronx, New York.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
St. Raymond’s is located just north of the Throggs Neck bridge. From I-295, take Exit 9, then follow 177th Street in a northwest direction to Lafayette Street. You’ll see the cemetery on the left at 177th and Lafayette Street.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Enter the cemetery and, shortly ahead on the right, not far from the main office, is the St. Paul section. Billie is buried there at Range 56, Plot 29. In this cemetery’s parlance, the notation means Billie’s grave is in the 56th row (every 15th row is marked), and her stone is the 29th from the road.

JANUARY 19, 1943 – OCTOBER 4, 1970

Janis Joplin grew up in a relatively comfortable family and, though her siblings did not challenge their traditional way of life, Janis abhorred it. She left her Texas home at seventeen and, after a few years as a country-and-western singer around Houston, hitchhiked to her destiny in San Francisco.

Soon she joined a new group called Big Brother and the Holding Company and everything fell into place. Until Big Brother, Janis hadn’t done much rock singing but she found it to be a perfect outlet for her pent-up frustrations, while the band’s exuberant and jagged sound complemented her raw vocals. Janis became a vibrating, explosive part of the songs, and with soaring screams and wails and almost animalistic abandon, she sang to sellout audiences up and down the West Coast.

Janis so overshadowed the group that it was only a matter of time before she went solo, and shortly after the band released
Cheap Thrills
in 1968, she struck out on her own. It turned out to be a miscalculation on her part. She assembled two different bands over the next two years but, though each was musically adept, there was little feel for Janis’s undisciplined style, and the raucous excitement of her work with Big Brother was missing.

In the fall of 1970 Janis was working on a new album while staying in room 105 of the Landmark Hotel (now the Highland Gardens Hotel) in Hollywood. On a Saturday afternoon, she called City Hall to inquire about getting a marriage license with her latest boyfriend and that night, recorded until about eleven
o’clock. Janis next visited a bar with a couple of friends and, upon returning to her room, shot up with heroin.

When her guitarist wondered why she hadn’t emerged from her room all day, she was found dead in bed. Though some still believe Janis committed suicide, the coroner ruled the 27-year-old’s death accidental.

In accordance with her wishes, Janis was cremated and her ashes scattered from an airplane over the coastline of California’s Marin County.

Janis had a will (evidence for those who speculate she committed suicide) that included the following bequests: $2,500 for two memorial gatherings for her friends in New York and in California; all rights and royalties for her work to be divided equally among her parents, her brother, and sister.

After her death, Janis’s album
Pearl
, which includes her raspy rendition of Kris Kristofferson’s “Me and Bobby McGee,” was released and went gold.

DECEMBER 21, 1959 – SEPTEMBER 21, 1998

While growing up in the Watts ghetto of Los Angeles, Florence Joyner took up running through a local youth foundation. She later attended UCLA on a track scholarship and, the year after graduation, earned a Silver Medal in the 200-meter event at the 1984 Olympic Games. After the Olympics, Flo worked as a bank service representative during the day and as a hair stylist at night and, at one point, added almost 60 pounds to her previously superbly athletic physique.

But by 1987, in a resolve to return to competition and qualify for the 1988 Games, Flo began training anew with her husband, Al Joyner, and her sister in-law, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, who had each already won their own gold medals. By the time of the Olympic Trials, Flo’s comeback was on track and she shaved an astonishing 2.7 seconds from the women’s 100-meter dash, a record that stands today.

At the games in Seoul, Flo’s comeback was complete. Flashy and confident, she stunned the world’s track community by claiming three gold medals for the 100-, 200-, and 400-meter races, as well as a silver medal for the 1600-meter relay. During that summer of spectacular performances, Flo (or Flo-Jo, as she came to be known) also teased audiences by showing off her perfectly toned physique in signature one-legged racing outfits with low-cut
tops. She made a further fashion statement with her lengthy and elaborately painted fingernails.

Not surprisingly, on the heels of her Olympic knockout performance, rumors swirled that Flo had been taking performance-enhancing substances. She always denied the accusations and never failed a drug test. She soon announced her retirement and lived comfortably on her endorsements of athletic gear and fingernail products. Later, Flo established the Florence Griffith Youth Foundation, a nonprofit program for disadvantaged youth.

On a September morning in 1998, Al Joyner awoke to find Flo unresponsive and not breathing. She had died during the night. A preliminary investigation suggested that she suffered some kind of cardiac problem, and the public’s immediate assumption was that Flo had died of a heart attack instigated by the excessive use of steroids. However, an autopsy revealed that Flo had died of “positional asphyxia due to epileptiform seizure” caused by a brain abnormality known as “cavernous angoima.” In layman’s terms, a deviation in her brain had caused an epileptic seizure, though not of the common convulsing variety, and Flo had simply suffocated in her pillow. The Orange County coroner added that he knew of no connection between that condition and steroid use.

But the story wasn’t over. Another of Flo’s endorsements was for milk and she had appeared in print advertisements wearing a “milk moustache” in a familiar Milk Council campaign. There is in milk a particular protein called casein that can produce a violent histological reaction in some people, especially in African Americans who happen to be more commonly lactose allergic. There is now a small movement afoot, initiated by folks who are adamant that humans have no business drinking cows’ milk in the first place. They suggest that Flo’s death was triggered by an allergic reaction to a dairy product, but that the information is being suppressed for fear of damaging the dairy industry.

At 38, Flo was buried at El Toro Memorial Park in Lake Forest, California.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
Lake Forest is a village that doesn’t appear on all California maps. It’s about ten miles south of Santa Ana on I-5. Take the Lake Forest Drive exit and follow it east for 2½ miles to Trabuco Road. Turn right and the cemetery is ahead one half-mile on the left.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Drive straight into the cemetery and park on the right in front of the Zaki Abujudeh bench, just before the “Park Rules” signboard. Follow the concrete path so that all of the
columbarium niches are on your left and, at the end of the path, walk into the grass on the right. There you’ll find Flo’s grave in front of the white Duncan bench.

SEPTEMBER 2, 1948 – JANUARY 28, 1986