Nine Famous People and What They’re Buried With
Icons of their time, these celebrities didn’t stray far from their public personae when it came to their final resting places
By Greg Daugherty
October 29, 2014
When the comedian David Brenner died earlier this year, obituaries reported that he’d asked to be buried with $100 in small bills, “just in case tipping is recommended where I’m going.â€
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Brenner is not the first celebrity to challenge the conventional wisdom of “you can’t take it with you.†Here are nine more:
Leonard Bernstein (1918 to 1990). The famous conductor and composer, whose works included the musicals On the Town and West Side Story, was buried with a piece of amber, a lucky penny, a baton, a copy of Alice in Wonderland and a pocket score of Gustav Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, according to the 2014 biography Leonard Bernstein: An American Musician. While each item had its significance in Bernstein’s life, the Mahler symphony was probably closest to his heart. At least one account claims it was placed directly over his heart in his casket, though others say it was simply put in alongside him.
Bernstein was known to have both idolized and identified with the late Austrian conductor and composer. Introducing a 1960 Young People’s Concert devoted to Mahler’s work, Bernstein observed, “It’s a problem to be both a conductor and a composer; there never seems to be enough time and energy to be both things. I ought to know because I have the same problem myself… It’s like being two different men locked up in the same body; one man is a conductor and the other a composer, and they’re both one fellow called Mahler (or Bernstein).â€
Read more:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/nine-famous-people-and-what-theyre-buried-180953186/#XCTvuJ8BECEeGtcr.99
