Claire Galofaro and Bruce Schreiner
Associated Press
LOUISVILLE: Every year on the same day, Muhammad Babar plans to walk past a soaring clock tower that juts 16-and-a-half storeys towards the sky, through a gate and into Cave Hill Cemetery, one of his city’s greatest wonders.
It will be an annual pilgrimage to visit The Greatest, his hero Muhammad Ali.
Ali’s tomb will undoubtedly become a drawcard for visitors from around the world.
“I think it will be a symbol of purity, compassion, a symbol of commitment, dedication, conviction and perseverance under the most difficult circumstances,” said Babar.
Ali always said he wished to be buried in his hometown, where he learnt to box and fought his first fight; where he built a museum and the city named a street in his honour. “He wanted to come home,” said family spokesperson Bob Gunnell.
He chose Cave Hill a decade ago. The challenge was deciding on a plot among its 121 hectares. He toured its twisting paths, towering trees and 130 000 graves whose inscriptions resemble the Who’s Who of Kentucky history. “He fell in love with this site,” Gunnell said.
Ali will have a simple marker, in accordance with Muslim tradition and his wish to remain humble despite his outsized life. Gunnell and the cemetery would not say exactly where the grave would be.
University of Louisville staff archaeologist Philip DiBlasi said Cave Hill can handle a world-famous resident. It has tall, stone walls and 24-hour security. It is also well-known for its beauty and wildlife. Cave Creek is home to more than 400 varieties of trees, with foxes, deer and peacocks skittering around.
The 24-page rules manual warns against leaving items such as liquor bottles around. Climbing trees, lying on graves, angry discussion and profane language are all prohibited, as are fake flowers and unnatural ornaments such as balloons or trinkets.
That hasn’t stopped fans of ‘Colonel’ Sanders, who died in 1980, from leaving buckets of chicken on his grave. Cave Hill painted a yellow line along the path to lead visitors from the entrance to his gravesite.
DiBlasi said he doubts that the vandalism that has haunted some other celebrity graves will happen to Ali’s site.
James Dean’s headstone has been stolen twice from a cemetery in rural Indiana, said Phyllis Seward, whose husband serves as the secretary of the complex, about a mile from where the heartthrob grew up. Someone tried to take a chip out of the stone, so the family replaced the headstone with one with shallow, curved carvings to deflect knives.
“They leave him beer, money, cigarettes,” Seward said. “They kiss it. We have to wipe the lipstick off the headstone all the time.”
Some visitors have something more devious planned. Someone stole Charlie Chaplin’s body from his grave in Switzerland and held it for ransom, Fells said. Elvis Presley was first buried at Forest Hill Cemetery in Memphis, Tennessee, but his family moved him to Graceland after three men were accused of plotting to steal the body.
A man pried a bronze plaque from Mark Twain’s tomb in Elmira, New York, two years ago. Even now, more than a century after the author’s death, half a dozen people show up every day, with many leaving letters or cigars, said Bryce Cuyle, the cemetery’s superintendent.
“You’re creating a shrine,” Cuyle said.
They don’t throw away the items. When it gets unsightly, they clean off the grave, put the material in a box and take it to a local Twain museum. Cuyle expects something similar to happen in Louisville.
“I’m sure for the next three, four years, that cemetery is going to have to take stuff off that marker every day,” he said.
Most days, someone is hovering around Bruce Lee’s grave at Lake View Cemetery in Seattle, more than 40 years after his death. Cemetery manager George Nemeth jr said people leave him karate belts and nunchaku, and sometimes perform martial arts routines.
For some celebrities, interest tapers off over time.
Buses used to show up in droves at Malcolm X’s gravesite every year on his birthday, said Joanne Aliberto, vice president of operations at Ferncliff Cemetery in Greenburgh, New York. Now, only one bus comes.
Judy Garland is also buried there, and people used to leave flowers there every day. But now, almost 50 years after her death, her grave is often bare, Aliberto said.
Michael Lelys, executive director of the Oak Ridge Cemetery adjacent to Abraham Lincoln’s tomb, says people still come by the hundreds to visit. The cemetery is the second most visited graveyard in the US, after Arlington National Cemetery.
“It feels like you’re able to go back in time with that person,” he said. “If you’re within feet of a famous celebrity, there’s almost an aura, a feeling like their spirit’s with you.” – Additional writing by Adrian Sainz from Memphis Tennessee