Tag: Death

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David Bruce: Death Anecdotes

Early in the implementation of Adolf Hitler’s “Final Solution,” the Nazis told the Jews that they were going to work camps which were not luxurious, but comfortable, and where there would be enough food. New arrivals to the concentration camps were met by a band playing lively music, and a Nazi officer would casually divide them into two groups. One group, made up of the strongest, would be sent to work. The much larger group, consisting of the weak, the aged, and the young, was sent to the bathhouses to be killed by the poison gas that poured out of shower heads instead of the water the new arrivals were expecting. Even the bathhouses were disguised. They were pleasant-looking buildings surrounded by gardens.

In 1952, Mother Teresa attempted to take care of a dying woman who had been discovered lying neglected, with part of her body eaten by rats and ants. Hospitals refused to take care of the dying woman, so Mother Teresa decided that her Missionaries of Charity would open a home for the dying. Soon after, they began to use a mostly abandoned Hindu temple for this purpose. About the people she helped there, Mother Teresa said, “They lived like animals. At least they die like human beings.”

Did you know that Jimmy Olson, Superman’s friend, played a role in the history of American opera? Jack Larson, who played Jimmy Olson in the 1950s TV series, wrote the libretto for the final opera by Virgil Thomson (1896-1989). Lord Byron (1972) is about the effort — which failed — to obtain a grave in Westminister Abbey for Lord Byron. Opera critic Barrymore Laurence Scherer writes that this opera deserves to be presented more often than it is.

Groucho Marx once was dragged to see a medium by his wife. He was reluctant to go, because he didn’t believe the medium could communicate with the dead, but he perked up when he heard that the medium would answer any question asked of her, even if it wasn’t about dead people. Groucho’s question was, “What’s the capital of North Dakota?” The medium didn’t know the answer, and two of her beefy male confederates threw Groucho out of the seance.

Female jockey Mary Bacon once suffered a serious concussion that left her unconscious and fighting for her life. Her mother sat with her, and a pleasant-looking man stopped by each morning. Eventually, her mother asked who the pleasant-looking man was. The hospital floor supervisor answered, “He’s the undertaker.” (Eventually, Ms. Bacon recovered and raced again.)

Sherry Britton was a Jewish stripteaser. During World War II, an American soldier sent her a photograph of herself which he had taken from a dead Nazi soldier. Ms. Britton says, “If the German had known he was carrying around a picture of a Jewish girl, he wouldn’t have had to be killed. He would have committed suicide.”

As figure skater Robert McCall lay dying of AIDS, he heard on the radio that he had died and he listened as the announcer read his obituary. He called the radio station and announced, “This is Robert McCall,” then he had the pleasure of using Mark Twain’s immortal line: “Rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated.”

“Shoeless Joe” Jackson was kicked out of professional baseball after being suspected of helping the Chicago Black Sox throw the 1919 World Series — despite batting .375 in the series. When he died, his last words were, “I’m going to meet the Greatest Umpire of all, now. I know that he will judge me innocent.”

When humorist George Ade died, Robert Benchley got out of bed and went out and had a good time, telling stories about Mr. Ade and drinking. According to Mr. Benchley, “When a great humorist dies, everybody should go to a place where there is laughter, and drink to his memory until the lights go out.”

A long-time Democrat was dying, and his family wanted to call in a clergyman. The Democrat declined to talk to the clergyman, saying, “I can’t see … what occasion … I have … for the services … of a clergyman. … I never … voted … the Republican ticket … in my life.”

Dusty Boggess was an outstanding major league umpire who had a baseball that was signed by all the umpires he had worked with in his career. When he died, the baseball was placed in his coffin and buried with him, just as he had specified in his will.

Vietnam War protesters understood how to make a point. Some protesters once threw confetti on Pat Nixon, the wife of President Richard Nixon. The confetti was printed with the message, “If this was napalm, you would be dead.”

“When Jesus tells us about his Father, we distrust him. When he shows us his Home, we turn away, but when he confides to us that he is ‘acquainted with Grief,’ we listen, for that also is an Acquaintance of our own.” — Emily Dickinson.

When Napoleon died, a courtier informed King George IV by saying, “Sire, your greatest enemy is dead.” The courtier should have stated his meaning more clearly, for King George IV replied, “By God, is she?”

Henny Youngman’s most famous one-liner was, “Take my wife — please!” At his funeral, Rabbi Noach Valley of the Actor’s Temple in New York prayed, “Dear God, take Henny Youngman — please.”

The priest asked a man on his deathbed, “Will you accept Jesus as your savior and renounce the devil?” The man weakly replied, “Reverend, I’m in no position to offend anyone.”

In his absence, the IRA once sentenced Irish playwright Brendan Behan to death. Mr. Behan sent the IRA “a polite note, saying that they could shoot me in my absence, also.”

Noël Coward once told reporter Robert Robinson, “One day I will retire from public life.” When asked when that day would be, Mr. Coward replied, “You may follow my coffin.”

When Rumi died, with his last words he asked that he be buried in the topmost part of his tomb, as he wanted to be the first to rise on resurrection day.

When Rabbi Israel Salanter died on Feb. 2, 1883, he left little behind to his descendants: a pair of Tephillin and a worn-out Talith.

When Demonax the Cynic philosopher was asked about death, he replied, “Wait a little, and I’ll send you a report.”

An outdoor sign at a San Diego church once asked, “Will it take six strong pallbearers to bring you back?”

“I expected this but not just yet.” — gravestone inscription.

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David Bruce: Death Anecdotes

Mining gold in the Klondike was arduous work; in fact, just getting to the Klondike was arduous work. Prospectors had to haul a ton of supplies over the Chilkoot Pass, or risk running out of food, but they were unable to carry more than 80 pounds over the pass at a time. One miner carried a ton of supplies over the pass, then made his way to Lake Lindemann. He built a boat there, then lost all his supplies when the boat crashed while running down the rapids. The miner then started over. He bought another ton of supplies, carried the supplies over the Chilkoot Pass, made his way to Lake Lindemann, and built another boat. Unfortunately, he again lost all his supplies when this boat crashed while running down the rapids. This time, the miner shot himself and died.

On April 24, 1915, the Turks began to commit genocide against the Armenian people because the Armenians lived both in Turkey and in Russia, the enemy of Turkey. By the time the Turks were defeated in 1918, they had killed over a million Armenians, and in the famine that followed the end of the war, hundreds of thousands more Armenians starved to death. Should such atrocities be remembered, or is it better to forget them? Adolf Hitler provides the answer to that question. When he decided to “kill without mercy all men, women, and children of Polish race or language,” some people told him that they were worried about world opinion. Hitler responded, “Who still talks nowadays of the extermination of the Armenians?”

On January 21, 1793, just before King Louis XVI was executed at the guillotine during the French Revolution, he tried to speak to the crowd that had gathered to watch him die. However, the officer in charge of the execution did not want the King to be heard, so he ordered his drummers to play loudly and drown out the words of the King. After the King’s head had been chopped off by the guillotine, the executioner lifted it up and displayed it to the people, who cheered. Much blood had spurted from the King’s body, and the crowd sopped it up with handkerchiefs and pieces of cloth to keep as souvenirs. Some members of the crowd even danced around the guillotine.

Near the end of his life, the heart of Mexican artist José Clemente Orozco grew weaker, and his cardiologist, Dr. Ignacio Chávez, recommended that he stop the strenuous work of painting huge murals and instead concentrate on the less strenuous work of creating easel paintings. However, Mr. Orozco refused to take this advice. Instead, he remarked to his wife, “I’m not going to do as the doctor says and abandon mural painting. I prefer physical death to the moral death that would be the equivalent of giving up mural painting.”

Judge Roy Bean, the Law West of the Pecos, also served as coroner. Once, he had to travel a hard 15 miles on muleback to investigate an accident. Falling timbers had crushed ten men, seven of whom were dead. The other three men were badly wounded. Judge Bean looked over all the men, and because he didn’t want to have to make a second 15-mile trip on muleback a few days later, he ruled that all ten men had died in an accident. He explained, “Them three fellas is bound to die.”

The book jacket of Graham Crackers, a compilation of humorous bits written by Monty Python’s Graham Chapman, shows photographs of how Mr. Chapman looked at age 12 and how he looks today. The “today” photograph shows a funerary urn — Mr. Chapman died on Oct. 4, 1989, the day before Monty Python celebrated its 20th anniversary. According to fellow Python member Terry Jones, Mr. Chapman’s death was “the worst case of party-pooping I’ve ever seen.”

The epitaph on William Shakespeare’s gravestone reads, “Good friend, for Jesus sake forbear / To dig the dust enclosed here. / Blest be the man that spares these stones, / And curst be he that moves my bones.” Although Shakespeare’s wife and daughter wished to be buried in the same grave as he, people so feared the curse written in the epitaph that their wishes were not respected.

The French Revolution degenerated into a Reign of Terror, and in September of 1792, mobs gave 1,400 political prisoners trials that lasted one minute each, then executed them with guillotines. The death toll did not stop there, as more and more innocent people were killed. In 1794, Antoine Lavoisier, the founder of modern chemistry and a true French patriot, died at a guillotine.

John Wilkes Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln on Friday, April 14, 1865. Although physicians tried all night to save the President’s life, he died at 7:22 a.m. After President Lincoln died, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton stated, “Now he belongs to the ages.” When President Lincoln’s son, Tad, learned of the assassination, he shouted, “They killed my pa! They killed my pa!”

General Dwight D. Eisenhower was sickened by what he found in the concentration camps when the Allies won World War II, and he wanted German citizens to know what their leaders had done. Therefore, he brought German citizens into the concentration camps and showed them the crematoria, the showers that dispensed deadly gas rather than water, and piles of corpses.

African-American novelist Zora Neale Hurston, author of the critically acclaimed Their Eyes Were Watching God, died penniless in 1960. When she was buried, her grave was unmarked. Fortunately, another acclaimed African-American novelist, Alice Walker, refused to let Ms. Hurston lie in a unmarked grave. In 1973, Ms. Walker located the grave and put a headstone on it.

Franklin D. Roosevelt almost did not become President of the United States. As he was speaking in Miami, Florida, a would-be assassin fired a gun at him, but missed and hit Chicago mayor Anton Cermak instead. Mr. Cermak died a few days later, but not before telling Mr. Roosevelt, “I’m glad it was me instead of you.”

African-American dancer-cum-choreographer Katherine Dunham accomplished many things in her life, winning the National Medal of the Arts and the Kennedy Center Honors for lifetime achievement. She once said, “I used to want the words ‘She tried’ on my tombstone. Now I want ‘She did it.’”

Some European countries treat their cemeteries as living gardens. They are designed as much for the living as for the dead, and they include such things as picnic areas and jogging, bicycling, and hiking paths.

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David Bruce: Death Anecdotes

While in prison awaiting her execution, Marie Antoinette was given no privacy — her jailers even watched her dress and undress. Even while she was dressing on the morning of her execution, the guards watched her — until she cried out, “In the name of God and decency, I beg you give me some privacy!” She did not object when the executioner cut off her long hair, but she became upset when she had to ride to the place of execution in a cattle cart rather than a coach. A crowd watched her ride in the cattle cart, and a mother held up her little daughter to see the doomed Queen of France. Not knowing what was going on, the little girl blew her a kiss, and Ms. Antoinette smiled. Standing before the guillotine, Ms. Antoinette accidentally stepped on her executioner’s hand, and said, “Pardon me, monsieur. I did not do it on purpose.” Those were her last words.

In 1431, English soldiers burned the French heroine Joan of Arc at the stake. After she died, the soldiers collected her ashes and threw them into the Seine River. However, the ashes of her heart were not thrown into the river because it had not burned. Later, the executioner swore that her heart would not burn, even though he had tried to burn it using charcoal, oil, and sulfur, in addition to the original wood. After she died, several people, including some English soldiers, became convinced that in killing Joan of Arc, they had killed a saint. In 1920, the Catholic Church made their fear a reality when they made her a saint.

In 1769, a Franciscan priest named Junípero Serra arrived in the southern coast region of what is now the state of California. His purpose was to start missions, but many people thought that at 56 he was too old for the harsh living conditions of the California wilderness. In fact, Father Serra became so ill that some soldiers traveling with him urged him to leave California and go home to Spain. However, the priest replied, “I shall not turn back. They can bury me wherever they wish.” He recovered, and he founded nine missions before dying in 1784.

African-American writer Zora Neale Hurston, author of Their Eyes Were Watching God, influenced other writers, including Alice Walker, the first African-American author to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. When Ms. Hurston died in 1960, she was buried in an unmarked grave, but Ms. Walker located the grave, cleaned it up, and gave it a headstone on which was engraved: “Zora Neale Hurston/‘A Genius of the South’/Novelist Folklorist/Anthropologist/1901-1960.”

On April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson stood in the Capitol Building in front of members of the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the Supreme Court, and he called for a declaration of war against Germany, which meant that the United States would join in the fighting of World War I. Everyone shouted, cheered, and waved flags. Afterward, President Wilson said, “My message today was a message of death for our young men. How strange it seems to applaud that.” Then he wept.

During World War II, many teenaged girls competed to see who could have the most pen pals in the United States military forces, but as the war dragged on, occasionally a letter addressed to a soldier would come back to the teenaged girl who had written it. The letter would include the reason why it had not been delivered — the front would be stamped “Deceased.”

Paul Laurence Dunbar, the first African American to make his living as a writer, died of tuberculosis at the age of 33. During his last days, he described the routine of his life in a letter to a friend: “My life consists of going to bed at the beginning of the month and staying there, with very brief intervals of half an hour or so, until the beginning of the next month.”

Archimedes designed war machines for the city of Syracuse, and he died when the city was taken after a long siege. He was busy solving a geometry problem during the attack, and when an enemy soldier found him, Archimedes asked if he could finish solving the problem before the solder killed him. The soldier did not oblige; instead, he killed the famous scientist immediately.

In the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution, Jacques Brissot and other leading members of the political group known as the Girondins were condemned to die at the guillotine. On October 31, 1793, all of them were taken to the guillotine, where their heads were chopped off — including the head of a Girondin who had committed suicide.

Sir Winston Churchill planned his own funeral and made sure it reflected the promise of resurrection. For example, Sir Winston directed that immediately after a bugler played “Taps,” which is played at military funerals, another bugler would play “Reveille,” which is the call to get up.

Bobby Griffith came from a religious family that told him that gay men would go to hell because they were sinful. On August 27, 1983, Mr. Griffith, a gay man, committed suicide two months after his 20th birthday by jumping from a freeway overpass directly in front of a fast-moving truck.

Late in Judy Garland’s career, she grew erratic, often showing up late or not showing up at all for performances. At Judy’s funeral, comedian Alan King made her daughter Liza Minnelli smile when he said, “This is the first time your mother has ever been on time for a performance.”

After George Washington complained about having a sore throat and a cold, the physicians of his day got hold of him. Among other “remedies,” they bled him, taking nine pints of blood from his body. What killed former President Washington? His physicians.

Rhythm and blues artist Aretha Franklin often sang one of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s favorite songs, “Precious Lord,” for him. The last time Ms. Franklin sang it especially for him was in April of 1968 — at his funeral.

Little Joe Monoghan, who stood only five foot tall, was an Old West personality with a fast draw and a secret. After Little Joe died of natural causes, the undertaker discovered that Little Joe was actually a woman.

“Die, my dear doctor! That is the last thing I will do!” — Lord Palmerston.

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