Bad Links?
Other glitches?
Notify Webmaster

Bugsy, Bugs and the rest of the gang

By RONDA RICH
Contributing Writer

Cemeteries and the history buried there fascinate me. It’s a Southern thing. We hate to let go of the past.

Many hours of mine have been spent roaming cemeteries and reading epitaphs. In the graveyard of one mountain church, I found parents who had outlived all six of their children. Can you imagine how grief must have been a constant companion of that husband and wife?

In St. Simons for a speaking engagement, I arrived early and decided to stop by Christ Church and tour its grounds again. At 13, after reading Eugenia Price’s trilogy of historical novels about the island and the Gould family, I had sauntered through the cemetery with Clara Gould, a direct descendent. I also met Eugenia Price in that graveyard. On this return trip, I found the graves of both women.

Discovered also was the grave of a solider who had fallen in the early days of the Civil War. His marker read, “He was literary and cultured by choice and a soldier by duty.”

I’ve seen a lot of graves.

In a little, desolate English village, near Bleinhem Palace, I searched determinedly until I found a tiny stone church on an ancient hill. Behind the church were no more than 40 or so graves but I found what I was looking for: the final resting place of one of the greatest men of the 20th Century.

There is no huge monument where Winston Churchill lies but the simplicity makes it more appealing. I read the note lying in plain sight on top of a bouquet of fresh lilies. Churchill’s daughter had written: Thank you for the proud and noble memories.

In Hollywood, as you might think, you can find lots of interesting graves like those of the Fairbanks family who have their own house and fountain. The owner of one of the popular cemeteries gave me a personal tour one day, adding colorful anecdotes.

“We picked up George Harrison’s body in that hearse,” he gestured toward an antique black car as he stopped before a crypt. “This is Rudolph Valentino. A mysterious black-haired woman brings flowers every week and has since he died in 1926.”

“The same woman?” I asked. You have to be careful in Hollywood. There’s lots of smoke and mirrors.

He chuckled. “We think it’s now her daughter. Maybe even her granddaughter.”

He moved to another crypt covered with lipstick kisses. There were seven or eight kisses in shades of red, pink and coral. “Look at this.”

“Bugsy Siegel! The mobster heartthrob!” He had a vision of turning a nothing desert town into a mecca of gambling and sin. Halfway through his building of the Flamengo Hotel in Las Vegas, he was brutally executed at the home of his Hollywood mistress, Virginia Hill. She, by the way, was a fiery Southern belle by way of Marietta, Ga.

“We clean this crypt two or three times a week from all the women who come out here and kiss it.” He shook his head and I blinked hard. I’d like to see the kind of women who would kiss the tomb of a man who has been dead since 1947.

In a Hollywood cemetery, I also found my all-time favorite epitaph. It belongs to Mel Blanc, the voice behind a hundred animated characters including Bugs Bunny and all the Looney Tunes. It says appropriately, “Th-th-that’s all, folks!”

Like Blanc, I know what I want for epitaph, what should be the final words of my story.

That’s All She Wrote.