Where Are They Buried? (91 page)

AUGUST 8, 1879 – NOVEMBER 16, 1950

NOVEMBER 26, 1895 – JANUARY 24, 1971

At the taste of his first alcoholic drink Bill Wilson was convinced he had found the elixir of life, but after seventeen years of hard drinking, alcohol had served only to destroy his health and career. From the rubble of that wasted life, Wilson overcame alcoholism and founded the Alcoholics Anonymous twelve-step program that has helped millions of others do the same. Influenced by AA, alcoholism has been medically redefined as a chronic disease and, as AA has inspired numerous mirror programs for a host of addictions, Bill is regarded as a profoundly influential social architect.

In 1934 Bill’s last drink precipitated an epiphany—a spiritually awakening flash of white light—and the former stockbroker who’d been reduced to an unemployable drunk came to believe that the key to sobriety was a change of heart. Five sober months later, while in Akron, Ohio, on business, Bill was tempted by the sounds and clamor of the hotel bar. Suddenly, at that moment, he realized that the only way he could save himself was to help another alcoholic. Through a series of desperate telephone calls in a strange town far from his home, he was able to find a skeptical drunk named Robert Smith who agreed to meet him that night. One month later, on June 10, 1935, Bob, who happened to be a doctor, had his last drink, and that date is regarded as the official birth of AA, which is based on the idea that an alcoholic can only be helped by another alcoholic.

Dr. Bob (AA members use first names only) immediately began working with alcoholics at Akron hospitals while Bill codified their principles into “Twelve Traditions,” an enduring blueprint for the Alcoholics Anonymous fellowship that has no formal or political organization, no governing officers, no rules or regulations, and no fees or dues. The chain reaction of “one drunk
helping another” has resulted in mass-produced sobriety, and AA today has more than three million members in 150 countries.

On November 16, 1950, Dr. Bob died of heart failure at 71 and was buried at Mount Peace Cemetery in Akron, Ohio.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
From I-77 take Exit 21C and follow Route 59 (Dart Avenue) east for two miles to its intersection with West Market Avenue. Turn left onto West Market, then make a right onto Aqueduct Street at the fourth traffic light and the cemetery will be a short distance ahead on the right.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Enter the cemetery at the second drive (the one with the brick columns) and, after 50 feet, stop. Dr. Bob rests 200 feet to the left and six rows from the chain-link fence.

On January 24, 1971, Bill died at 75 of emphysema and was buried at South Village Cemetery in East Dorset Vermont.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
From the junction of Routes 7 and 7A, follow 7A south for one mile. The cemetery is on the right.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Enter the cemetery, turn right, and follow the road up the hill. Fifty feet past the hairpin turn, on the left, are two white footstones marking the graves of Bill and his wife, Lois.

AUGUST 5, 1930 – AUGUST 25, 2012

In the strict and official terms of NASA-speak, Neil Armstrong was the “first human to set foot on a celestial body beyond Earth.” But in his own words, the hero was more reticent about his accomplishment, merely finding the moon “an interesting place to be, and I recommend it.”

Armstrong began his aerospace career as a Navy fighter pilot serving in the Korean War. He became a test pilot and flew hundreds of the hottest aircraft around, including a sleek X-15 rocket plane that he took to 38 miles above the surface of the earth, right to the edge of space. But as a NASA astronaut, he actually took just two trips into space. His first journey came in 1966 as commander of the Gemini 8 mission, which nearly ended in disaster when a thruster rocket malfunctioned and caused the landing capsule to spin wildly out of control. Armstrong kept his cool and brought the craft safely home.

His next space trip came in July 1969 when Armstrong and fellow astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins journeyed 250,000 miles on Apollo 11 for a visit to the moon that went down in the history books. Four days after the trio blasted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida, the world watched and waited as their lunar module
Eagle
separated from the command module and began its descent to the moon’s surface. Minutes later came the words from Armstrong: “Tranquility Base here, the
Eagle
has landed.” About six and a half hours later at 10:56
P.M.
ET on July 20, 1969, Armstrong, at 38, became the first person to set foot on the moon, uttering the now famous: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Aldrin followed him fifteen minutes later and, before returning to the spacecraft, the two spent two and a half hours setting up an American flag, scooping up moon rocks, and installing a stainless steel plaque inscribed “We came in peace for all mankind.” After returning home from the mission, Armstrong took a low profile and became what his son called a “reluctant American hero who always believed he was just doing his job.” He left NASA in 1971.

Just after his 82nd birthday, Armstrong underwent quadruple-bypass heart surgery and died two weeks later from surgery complications. He was cremated, his ashes given to his wife.

In a statement his family said, “For those who may ask what they can do to honor Neil, we have a simple request. Honor his example of service, accomplishment, and modesty, and the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink.”

NOVEMBER 2, 1734 – SEPTEMBER 26, 1820

Born in a log cabin near present-day Reading, Pennsylvania, Daniel Boone was one of the most famous pioneers in United States history. By 1751 Daniel was getting by in North Carolina as a hunter and trapper, and in 1760 he first ventured into the little-known Cumberland Gap region. Although the location of the pass in the Blue Ridge Mountains had been mapped more than fifteen years earlier, the French and Indian War had discouraged exploration and settlement of the Kentucky wilderness. The British later continued to prohibit western migration (they had no manpower to protect the frontier), but Daniel and many others ignored the crown’s ban and crossed the gap to find what lay beyond.

In 1775, the Wilderness Road was built by Daniel and two dozen axmen, and it soon became the primary route to the West.
He founded Boonesborough and, during the Revolutionary War, Kentucky was organized as a Virginia county.

Though they may not have been quite as romantic as his legend suggests, Daniel did have numerous encounters with the native people of Kentucky. In 1776, after Shawnee warriors kidnapped his daughter and two others, Daniel made a daring rescue by mounting a surprise nighttime attack. In 1778, after he was himself captured by another band of Shawnee who were planning an attack on Boonesborough, he negotiated a settlement with Chief Blackfish, preventing the onslaught. Admired for his leadership and his woodsman skills, Daniel was later adopted into the tribe as a son of Blackfish.

In 1792, when Kentucky was admitted into the Union as the fifteenth state, litigation questioning settlers’ title to their lands arose and Daniel lost all his property due to his lack of clear title. Undaunted, the inveterate pioneer continued west and settled in Missouri. In 1800 Daniel was appointed magistrate of the Femme Osage District in St. Charles County, Missouri, and received a large tract of land for his services. But when Missouri was transferred to the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase, he once again lost all his land.

Daniel spent his remaining years at his son’s Missouri home and passed away at 85.

He was buried in Marthasville, Missouri, near his wife, Rebecca, who had died seven years previously.

From there, the story gets muddled. In 1845 a delegation from Kentucky honored their pioneer hero with a monument in the
capital city’s cemetery (this delegation had had no hand in the federal action that stripped Daniel of his lands 50 years before), and Daniel and Rebecca were exhumed and reinterred in Frankfort. But mistakes happen easily in the grave-switching business, and it seems that someone dug up the wrong body. The grave next to Rebecca’s was already occupied when Daniel died, so he was buried at her feet. Daniel’s relatives, who were upset that he was being moved at all, didn’t inform the diggers of his true location and they allowed Rebecca’s bones to be carted off along with someone else’s—not Daniel’s. In 1983 a forensic anthropologist studied a plaster cast of the skull in the Frankfort grave and concluded that it belonged to “a large black man.” Not surprisingly, proponents of the Frankfort locale dismissed the anthropologist’s credentials and his findings.

Oh well. Both graves have worthy monuments; Frankfort’s is bigger, but rural Marthasville seems more suited to a frontiersman.

DIRECTIONS TO DANIEL’S GRAVE IN FRANKFORT, KENTUCKY:
From I-64, take Exit 58, follow Route 60 west for four miles, and the Frankfort Cemetery is on the left. Enter the cemetery and follow the line that’s painted on the road. After a short distance, you can’t miss his monument on the right.

DIRECTIONS TO DANIEL’S GRAVE IN MARTHASVILLE, MISSOURI:
About 30 miles west of St Louis, on Route 94 just west of Dutzow, is a sign on the right that points the way to the grave. On a knoll overlooking Duque Creek, the grave site is quite serene.

MAY 10, 1838 – APRIL 26, 1865

The members of John Wilkes Booth’s family were touring actors, and John, his father, and his two brothers were firmly established thespians. By 1863, though, the Southern-sympathizing Booth had hatched a preposterous plan to abduct President Lincoln and deliver him to Richmond, then to ransom him in exchange for peace with the South or Confederate prisoners.

Remarkably, Booth was able to enlist at least a half-dozen other conspirators in his kidnapping scheme. It was decided that they would carry out their plan by capturing Lincoln during a planned appearance in March 1865, but the President changed plans at the last minute and the plot was foiled. Just a few weeks later, Robert E. Lee’s army surrendered to the Union, and Booth’s bunch quickly changed gears, plotting instead to assassinate
Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson, and Secretary of State William Seward simultaneously. Booth hoped the resulting chaos and weakness in the government would lead to a comeback for the South.

When Booth learned that Lincoln would be attending a performance at Ford’s Theater in Washington on April 14, his plan was set in motion. The conspirators agreed that the three murders would occur at about ten o’clock that evening. At the prescribed time, Booth sneaked into the theater and shot Lincoln in the back of the head at point-blank range. His co-conspirators made no attempt on Johnson’s life, but one, Lewis Powell, did manage to stab Seward, wounding him.

After shooting Lincoln, Booth jumped down to the stage shouting, “
Sic semper tyrannis!
(Thus ever to tyrants!) The South is avenged!” He snapped the fibula bone in his left leg during his leap, then limped out the theater’s back door to a waiting horse. He fled first to the tavern of sympathizer Mary Surratt, where he met up with Herold, then to the home of another conspirator, Dr. Samuel Mudd, who splinted his leg.

For the next twelve days Booth and Herold traveled south under cover of night until federal authorities caught up with them near Port Royal, Virginia, surrounding them in a tobacco barn. Herold surrendered, but Booth refused to give up and the barn was set afire. In the ensuing confusion Booth was shot through the neck by Sergeant Boston Corbett. Though the orders had been to take the assassin alive, Booth died a few hours later at sunrise. According to a popular account Booth repeatedly muttered, “useless, useless,” as he lay dying, but some historians now believe that the garbled, barely whispered sounds may have instead been, “Lucy, Lucy,” for his betrothed, Lucy Hale. In any event, his final words, supposedly, were, “Tell Mother I died for my country.” He was 26.