Where Are They Buried? (44 page)

Unable to sleep because the dinghy kept bumping into the vessel, it seems that she went out on the deck to tie it more securely but, inebriated from the night’s refreshments, she accidentally slipped into the water. Wearing bed socks, a short tartan nightie, and wrapped in a waterlogged red duvet, the Coast Guard found Natalie in the morning, floating face down in the water offshore from Catalina’s lava caves.

Robert and Walken, as well as the yacht’s captain, who had been sleeping in his cabin, were separately interrogated, and their testimony was found to be fairly consistent. Bruises found on Natalie’s arms and hands were believed to have been a result of her struggles to climb back aboard the vessel, and her death was ruled an accidental drowning.

Robert had named their yacht
Splendor
after the 1961 movie
Splendor in the Grass
, for which Natalie was nominated for an Oscar. It was an odd gesture since, during its filming, Natalie had fallen for the routine seductions of costar Warren Beatty, which led to the breakup of her first marriage with Robert. Even more ironic, in
Splendor in the Grass
Natalie played a girl who tried to drown herself.

Natalie was 43 and was buried at Westwood Memorial Park in Los Angeles.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
This little cemetery holds numerous celebrities and is peculiarly located behind the office complex at 10850 Wilshire Blvd., which is just about a half-mile east of I-405.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Natalie’s marker is in the central lawn of the cemetery. Counting from the drive bordering the top of the lawn, it’s in the fifth row, approximately in the middle.

FEBRUARY 21, 1927 – APRIL 22, 1996

As America’s first lady of household humor, Erma Bombeck turned her views of daily life in the suburbs into satirical newspaper columns and fourteen best-selling books, including
I Lost Everything in the Post-Natal Depression
and
The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank
.

Erma began a career in journalism but left the profession in 1953 to start a family. At 37 she realized she was, “too old for a paper route, too young for Social Security and too tired for an affair,” and started writing a weekly column for a local paper. The column, “At Wit’s End,” was a showcase for her repartee and observations on such drudgery as dirty laundry, uncooperative pets, nosy neighbors, and her blossoming, know-it-all children. She was master of precise witticisms, to wit: “No one ever died from sleeping in an unmade bed”; “Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died”; and “It goes without saying that you should never have more children than you have car windows.” Erma’s banter raised the spirits of housewives and, within a year, her column was syndicated, eventually appearing in more than 600 papers.

In 1991 Erma was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy shortly thereafter. Two years later she began a daily routine of dialysis as polycistic kidney disease took hold and, in April 1996, Erma received a kidney transplant. For the first time, Erma discussed her disease in a column to her readers, writing about illness and compassion, and her faithful, adoring readers responded by the thousands with moving sympathy for their adored spokeswoman.

Three weeks after the operation, Erma died of complications from the transplant at 69.

At her funeral service, one eulogist reminded mourners of a final Erma quotation: “When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left and could say, ‘I used everything you gave me.’”

She was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in Dayton, Ohio.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
From I-75, take Exit 52 and follow Route 35 east to the Jefferson Street exit. Turn south on Jefferson Street, which will become Warren Street and then Brown Street. (Brown Street is now also known as Erma Bombeck Way.) After about a half-mile, turn left onto Woodland Avenue, and the cemetery is a short distance ahead.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Enter the cemetery and, after about 150 yards, to the left you’ll see a bench with two derby hats sculpted into it (dedicated to the Wright Brothers). Behind this bench is a boulder, and just behind this stone lies Erma. Her grave is otherwise unmarked.

AUGUST 15, 1912 – AUGUST 13, 2004

During World War II, Julia Child found work with the Office of Strategic Services and her first successful recipe was for a shark repellent that prevented underwater explosives from being prematurely jostled and detonated by sharks. Remaining in France after the war with her high-ranking military husband who was an erudite culinary expert, she attended the prestigious Le Cordon Bleu culinary academy and proved fearless in her willingness to try new techniques, from filleting a fish to gutting a chicken, and later opened her own informal school teaching the intricacies of French cuisine to fellow ex-pats.

In 1961, Julia’s 734-page book (in collaboration with French chefs Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle)
Mastering the Art of French Cooking
was published and soon topped the bestsellers list, lauded for its precise attention to detail and for making fine cuisine accessible to ordinary folk. Later that winter at an appearance to promote the book, Julia brought an omelet pan, a whisk, an apron, and a dozen eggs to liven up the televised interview and chattily whipped up an omelet in front of the cameras. A star was born.

Showcasing a
sui generis
persona, her own television series named
The French Chef
(which would become the longest-running program in the history of public television) soon debuted, and she eventually headlined eight more shows while penning nine additional cookbooks. As America’s new gastronomic guru, Julia Child found no equal, and in a warbling and encouraging voice she elevated the nation’s culinary standards. She taught that food and wine should be relished as a way of appreciating life’s bounty and her
joie de vivre
, ability to explain techniques, and what-me-worry approach to mistakes made serious cooking fun. If she dropped a potato pancake while flipping it, she scraped it up and went on. Sipping wine and tasting liberally while cooking, Julia concluded every show with a cheery “Bon Appétit!”

At 91, Julia died in her sleep and was cremated. Her final meal was French Onion Soup.

JULY 1, 1961 – AUGUST 31, 1997

Daughter of an earl in one of the most aristocratic British families, Diana Frances Spencer was the perfect candidate to marry Prince Charles, heir to the throne. Their courtship began after her older sister Sarah’s nine-month relationship with Charles ended and, at nineteen, Lady Diana Spencer had become an object of fixation for the national media. She soon cultivated a bashful but charming smile for the cameras that earned her the nickname “Shy Di.”

In February 1981, Charles proposed to Diana, and the couple appeared together in public for the first time at the official engagement announcement. They were married in the wedding of the century on July 29, 1981, at St. Paul’s Cathedral. The couple smiled blissfully from the balcony at Buckingham Palace and kissed dutifully. To the adoring public, Diana and Charles appeared to be the perfect royal couple, especially when they produced William and Harry, an “heir and a spare.”

Reports that their marriage was steadily unraveling leaked from the palace in the late 1980s, and the relentless press speculated that both Charles and Diana were having extramarital affairs. Indeed, Charles had resumed a liaison with a darling from his bachelorhood, Camilla Parker-Bowles, while Diana carried on with a cavalry officer, James Hewitt. In December 1992 it was announced that Charles and Diana were separating and a year later, Charles admitted in a television interview that he’d had an adulterous relationship with Camilla. Diana responded with her own admission of adultery during a 1995 televised interview and expressed her desire to be “queen of people’s hearts.”

In a February 1996 letter, Queen Elizabeth II urged the couple to divorce and by the end of the year their decree was officially granted. Under the terms of the divorce agreement, Diana shared custody of William and Harry, received a lump-sum payment of $26.5 million, and was allowed to remain in a five-bedroom apartment in Kensington Palace. Diana was also stripped of her honorific “Her Royal Highness” and would instead be known simply as Diana, Princess of Wales.

Though Diana maintained a hectic schedule of appearances, especially those for her favorite charity causes—AIDS, breast
cancer, child abuse, and land mines—as a divorcée, she began finally to live on her own terms. Unencumbered by stodgy royal protocols, she lived and socialized more freely. By the summer of 1997, Diana splashed into a romance with the debonair Emad (Dodi) al-Fayed, an Egyptian-born businessman and movie producer. Though she’d been rumored to have been involved with a number of men since her marriage disintegrated, her romance with Dodi was her first serious attachment.

Only five weeks into their whirlwind relationship, Diana and Dodi were killed in a car crash in a tunnel along the Seine River in Paris. News of Diana’s death shocked the world and precipitated an outpouring of condolences that no one could have predicted. Anger was directed toward the paparazzi, which supposedly had been pursuing the fleeing Diana and her entourage, indirectly causing the crash. (It was later determined by a French court that the driver of their car, Henri Paul, who was also killed, was legally drunk and on prescription drugs at the time of the crash.) The court’s report further stated that both Diana and Dodi would have survived the crash had they been wearing seatbelts.

Donations flooded the newly established Diana, Princess of Wales Fund, which was set up to serve her favorite charities, and Elton John earmarked future royalties from his song “Candle in the Wind,” which he’d reworked to eulogize Diana, to the trust. After an extravagant service at Westminster Abbey, Diana was laid to rest on a leafy island in the center of a tranquil ornamental lake known as the Oval at the Spencer family’s Althorp estate. The estate is 70 miles north of London and just about 6 miles west of the town of Northampton, and it’s open to the public during the summer months for a small admission fee. But if you wish to see Diana’s grave, save your money. Access anywhere near her resting place is restricted.

JANUARY 16, 1932 – DECEMBER 27, 1985

In 1967, Dian Fossey established the Karisoke Research Center in Rwanda’s Volcano National Park, and from this primitive and isolated rainforest camp, she studied mountain gorillas for almost twenty years. Dian’s methodology was not to study the apes from afar, but rather to ingratiate herself into their society as a peripheral quasi-member. Thus, she put together a firsthand chronicle of the elusive apes’ world.

By the 1970s, though, poachers had uncovered markets wherein gorilla babies could be sold for exhibition, and they were also able to command high black-market prices for the trophy heads, hands, and feet of adults. The appendages were made into ashtrays, of all things. Recognizing the threat posed to the gorillas’ fragile population, Dian fought against the poachers. Rwandan authorities, however, did not consider poaching a priority, nor did they have adequate resources to control it.

Fears for the safety of her own gorilla “family” were justified in 1978 when her most darling gorilla, Digit, was killed. His hands and feet had been hacked off and other members of his family killed, too. Dian buried the massacred gorillas in a cemetery she built by her camp and steeled herself to become a vigilante of sorts, engaging in an all-consuming, unconventional war against the poachers. Circulating stories that she was a sorceress who could curse her enemies, she played the role of a witch around suspected poachers and fueled the notion that she had the power to damn them. She organized antipoaching patrols and placed bounties on poachers’ heads. On one occasion, she abducted the child of a local woman suspected of stealing a gorilla baby and offered to exchange hostages. Meanwhile, her Western colleagues wondered if Dian had gone insane.