Where Are They Buried? (90 page)

Six years later, when four failing Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets in Columbus, Ohio, desperately needed an experienced manager to turn them around, Dave jumped at the opportunity, cutting a deal in which he gained ownership of the locations to boot. In 1968, just another six years later, Dave sold the revitalized restaurants back to the KFC company and pocketed a cool $1.1 million.

Ever the entrepreneur, Dave a year later opened his first Wendy’s Old Fashioned Hamburgers, naming the restaurant after his 8-year-old daughter, Melinda Lou, who had been nicknamed Wendy by her siblings. By lending the KFC restaurant strategies to the burgeoning fast-food hamburger business and always focusing on the customer, Dave grew that single restaurant into a chain of more than 6,000 with sales of over $7 billion.

A shrewd marketer—Wendy’s “Where’s the beef?” advertising campaign is still a classic—Dave became a household name when he began personally pitching his burgers and fries in television commercials in 1989. At the time, the company was in a difficult period and its earnings had tanked. But the humorous, homespun ads featuring a smiling, portly Dave in a Wendy’s apron lent the company a fresh, down-home, unsophisticated image and launched Wendy’s to unexpected success.

Dave had been adopted as a child, and in 1990 President George H.W. Bush asked him to be a national advocate for adoption. He accepted the challenge and encouraged people to consider
adopting older children, not just babies. In 1992 he established the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, which helps make adoption more affordable. “I know firsthand how important it is for every child to have a home and loving family,” he said. “Without a family, I would not be where I am today.”

Dave had a carcinoid tumor in his liver for more than a decade, he underwent quadruple heart-bypass surgery in 1996, and began undergoing dialysis for a kidney problem in early 2001. Finally, at 69, Dave’s body gave out and he expired of the liver condition.

He was buried at Union Cemetery in Columbus, Ohio.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
From Route 315, exit at Broadway Avenue, turn west on Olentangy River Road and the cemetery is immediately on the right.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Follow the main drive into the cemetery and you’ll see three mausoleum buildings off to the right. Walk in through the middle doors of the building with rust-colored awnings and, immediately inside, look left. There’s Dave!

APRIL 12, 1932 – NOVEMBER 30, 1996

Tiny Tim was the ukulele-strumming crooner who amused millions by trilling “Tiptoe Through the Tulips,” a whimsical love ditty he appropriated on behalf of the flower generation. Born Herbert Khaury, the frizzy-haired, goofy-looking, offbeat entertainer built a career on this single hit song, his stratospheric falsetto, and an asexual and childlike stage persona.

Tiny found his fame on Johnny Carson’s
Tonight Show
, and his 1969 on-air marriage to Vicki Budinger (“Miss Vicki,” as he always called her), whom he met at a promotional event for his book,
Beautiful Thoughts
, drew an audience of 40 million. In later years he found fans within the retro-music crowd and always got an enthusiastic welcome at his off-center appearances, most notably on Howard Stern’s radio program where, in fascinating interviews, he divulged numerous eccentricities: He’d never learned to drive; after showering, he dried himself with paper towels; to avoid using public bathrooms, Tiny wore adult diapers when he was away from home; and he applied Oil of Olay lotion to his body eight times a day. Yep, Tiny had his ssues.

By 1996 Tiny was on his third marriage (this time to Miss Sue), he was performing some 300 days a year, and he was in terrible health, suffering from congestive heart failure and diabetes.
In September, after he became dizzy and fell from a stage, doctors informed Tiny that, though he might live a few more years, he could also die at any moment and should immediately discontinue performing. For a time, Tiny convalesced, but by November he was appearing at a few gigs. At the Women’s Club of Minneapolis, Tiny and his ukulele took the stage but, partway into his signature “Tiptoe Through the Tulips,” Tiny was looking shaky. Asked by his concerned Miss Sue if he was feeling alright, Tiny spoke his last words, “No, I’m not.”

Tiny often fibbed about his age, but at 64, he was laid to rest, with a ukulele in his casket, at Lakewood Cemetery in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
From I-94, take Exit 231B and follow Hennepin Avenue south for two miles. At that point the road will “T,” and the driveway into the cemetery will be in front of you.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Enter the cemetery, turn right, and follow the drive to the mausoleum. Enter the mausoleum, turn to the right, and get on the elevator. Take the elevator to the ground floor, then turn left out of the elevator. Proceed to the last alcove on the left and you’ll see Tiny’s crypt on the left wall.

APRIL 1, 1880 – SEPTEMBER 22, 1947

JANUARY 26, 1905 – MARCH 28, 1987

Baron Georg von Trapp was a distinguished Austrian naval commander, but when the Austro-Hungarian empire collapsed after World War I, his country lost its seacoast, and this captain’s naval career promptly ended. After Georg’s wife died a few years later, a twenty-year-old Jesuit novitiate named Maria Kutschera joined his household to care for the seven children. A romance blossomed and in 1927 the 47-year-old ex-sailor married Maria the ex-nun. The happy couple would themselves have three children,
but in the interim, the banks in Austria crashed and Georg’s fortune was wiped out, leaving the von Trapp family destitute.

The von Trapps took the most logical course of action; the musically inclined Maria, all of the children, and their religious mentor, Monsigneur Franz Wasner, polished their singing hobby into a stage act that became the family profession. Though Georg didn’t participate in the singing, his stature as a Baron (though a bankrupt one) and a naval commander (without a navy), opened doors, and the von Trapp family was soon performing Gregorian chants and English madrigals all over Europe.

In March 1938 the Nazis goose-stepped into Salzburg and the von Trapps fled Hitler’s war machine, leaving their home and material possessions behind, never to return. In contrast to the romanticized version of their story in
The Sound of Music
, the von Trapps did not escape Austria by strolling across the Alps. Instead, they rode a train to Italy and boarded a ship to America without incident.

Stateside, the German-speaking von Trapps struggled to reestablish themselves. The enterprising Maria persisted and the family singing group again found success. For almost two decades the von Trapps spent eight months a year touring America, and every summer ran a music camp at their Vermont farm, until the frenetic pace took its toll; one of Maria’s daughter’s eloped in 1948 while her eldest daughter suffered a nervous breakdown and was administered electroshock therapy in 1952. Maria was eventually forced to hire non-family members for the singing group and finally, in 1957, when the oldest children were in their 40s, the von Trapps stopped performing.

In 1958 Maria signed away all of the stage and film rights to her book,
The Trapp Family Singers
, for a paltry $9,000, and the story made its Broadway debut as
The Sound of Music
in 1959. The hit musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein enjoyed a run of more than 1,400 performances before it closed, and it’s Oscar-winning movie clone starring Julie Andrews as Maria replicated that success after its 1965 premier.

Meanwhile, after a one-year stint as a New Guinea missionary, Maria toiled in the day-to-day operations of the Trapp Family Lodge until she was 80 and then, at 82, died of kidney disease. Georg had died years earlier, in 1947 at age 67. In any event, both Georg and Maria now rest at the Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe, Vermont.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
From the center of Stowe, take Route 108 north for two miles, then turn left onto Luce Hill Road. Proceed up the hill, after 1½ miles bear left onto Trapp Hill Road, and
after another half-mile is the Trapp complex. On your right you’ll see a large hotel and a visitor parking area. Once you park your car, you’ll be happy to find that the von Trapps have been interred in a garden conveniently located behind the gift shop.

MARCH 29, 1918 – APRIL 5, 1992

In the early 1960s, a franchisee of the Ben Franklin variety store chain presented its executives with an ambitious idea for the operation of a number of new stores. As the concept of discount retailing had just emerged and new discount stores were opening in population centers across the nation, Sam Walton sought to tweak the existing discount concept and open even bigger stores and operate on smaller profit margins in suburban and rural areas. Not surprisingly, in the staid 1960s world of retail, where change occurred glacially, this revolutionary idea bucking every rule of retailing was quickly turned down. Undeterred and confident that large discount stores really could thrive in small towns, Sam went it alone and opened his first Wal-Mart on July 2, 1962.

Now committed to discounting, Sam crusaded to drive costs from the merchandising system and he doggedly drove his prices down and down and down. With his margins cut to the bone, it was imperative that Wal-Mart grow sales at a relentless pace and, boy, did it ever.

As the chain began to take off, Sam continually managed the growth, and at every turn seemed to make the right decision. As early as 1966 he understood the need to computerize his merchandise controls, and Wal-Mart went on to become the icon of just-in-time inventory. To keep merchandise resupply logistics streamlined, no stores were built more than a day’s drive from a distribution center, and today Wal-Mart can fill merchandise orders within two days, compared with a week or more for its rivals. Also, Sam worked hard indoctrinating his employees, whom he always called associates; profit-sharing plans were installed, scholarships were established in the names of associates who crafted particularly useful business improvement ideas, and cheers and songs helped build a team atmosphere.

As Wal-Mart’s influence grew, however, Sam was vilified by some, especially beleaguered small-town merchants. A nostalgic national press eulogized the lost graces of small-town America and the blame was put squarely on Sam’s shoulders. Sam viewed all these arguments as foolishness though, because
he
had once been a small-town merchant who had seen the future coming
and chosen to eat rather than be eaten. Perhaps he did clutter America’s countryside, ruin its Main Street, and force a lot of people to change the way they made a living, but he merely hastened such inevitable changes. The consumer had chosen Wal-Mart because it gave America what it really wanted—friendly service, clean and organized stores, enormous selection and, above all, low prices. Capitalism had worked again.

Sam died at 74 of complications due to cancer and was buried at Bentonville Cemetery in Bentonville, Arkansas.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
From Highway 71, take Exit 69 and follow Route 72 west for three miles, through the center of Bentonville, to F Street. Turn left on F Street and the cemetery is a short distance ahead on the right.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Turn right into the cemetery at the first drive (Lane 10), and the Walton plot can’t be missed immediately to your left.

By the way, Sam Walton made a lot of money, and you could’ve too, if only you’d known. Since Wal-Mart went public in 1970, when its shares were offered for two dollars, it has split eight times and a $1,000 investment made then would now represent 128,000 shares worth a cool $7 million. Sam himself owned 39 percent of the company at his death, and his fortune was split five ways among relatives. Were he still alive and his fortune not divided, his worth would be a whopping twice that of Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who at $76 billion, is the world’s richest person.