America’s Most Famous Graves & Burial Sites

On my visit to Flushing Cemetery, New York City, I went first to the grave of Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong. It is impossible to miss. Adoring fans have left Mardi Gras beads, hats, coins, a plastic trumpet and photographs of Louis, turning the plot into a small shrine. A short walk away, in Section 31, lies […]

On my visit to New York I went to the most densely packed cemetery I have ever seen, Mount Zion Cemetery in Maspeth, Queens. With my copy of A Ship Without a Sail in hand, I visited the grave of a man who wrote some of the most romantic songs of the twentieth century: Lorenz […]

On my late-morning walk through Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York, I paid a visit to the grave of New York City’s 99th mayor, known to most today by the airport named in his honour: Fiorello La Guardia, “the Little Flower”. The diminutive mayor was born in Greenwich Village in 1882. His father, Achille […]

On my visit to Westchester Hills Cemetery in Hastings-on-Hudson, about 30 km from Midtown Manhattan, I visited the grave of the great actor and singer, Tony Randall, best remembered for his iconic role in The Odd Couple as the neat-freak, hypochondriac perfectionist, Felix Unger. Aryeh Leonard Rosenberg was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma and was the […]

On my recent trip to New York City, I stayed in Flushing, Queens, and rode my bike to Flushing Cemetery to visit one of the world’s greatest jazz musicians, Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong. Louis was born in New Orleans in 1901, just as jazz was taking shape on the city’s streets. Brass bands, ragtime, blues, church […]

On my drive out of New York City, I stopped at Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York, about 40 km north of Manhattan in Westchester County, to visit the grave of the Russian-born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum, known to the world as Ayn Rand. When I arrived, a book was resting on her headstone. I later […]

On a walk through Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, I made my way to the Garden Conservatory mausoleum. There, on the face of a bottom-row crypt, rested a single yellow guitar pick, left for the lead guitarist and co-founder of KISS, Ace Frehley. Paul Daniel Frehley was born not far from here, in the Bronx, […]

On my visit to St. John Roman Catholic Cemetery in Middle Village, Queens, New York City, I visited the Cloister mausoleum and found the crypt of the “World’s Most Perfectly Developed Man,” Angelo Siciliano, better known as Charles Atlas. Angelo was born in Acri, Calabria, Italy, and emigrated to the United States with his mother […]

I arrived at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York, in Westchester County, about 40 km north of Yankee Stadium, and visited Section 25 with glove and ball in hand to  visit the scrappy Yankees infielder and hugely successful manager: Alfred Manuel Martin, better known as Billy Martin. Billy Martin was of Italian and […]

While in New York City I visited both Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx and Trinity Church Cemetery and discovered the graves of two prominent New York businessmen, Isidor Straus, co-owner of Macy’s Department Stores, and John Jacob Astor IV, real estate tycoon, who both perished on the Titanic on April 15, 1912. As the story […]

Ivana Trump was buried at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster in July 2022, following her death at age 73. While most people are buried in a public cemetery or churchyard, she was laid to rest in a private plot on the grounds of the golf course near the first tee. We know from photos that […]

On my walk through Union Cemetery in Columbus, Ohio, a CFL football in hand, I visited the grave of legendary Ohio State Buckeye football coach Wayne Woodrow “Woody” Hayes. An Ohio native, Hayes was raised in a working-class family. His father, a schoolteacher, was strict and demanding—traits that rubbed off on young Woody early. After […]