Life’s Mementos, Big and Small, Follow Some to the Grave

If there is a hog heaven, the outlaw biker who was buried with his Harley is probably flying his colors today on some ethereal interstate.

Honoring a tradition at least as old as the Pharaohs, many modern Americans take prized possessions to the grave.

Rosaries and wedding rings are sometimes sealed up with the dead, along with such unusual items as a crushed motorcycle and even a royal flush placed by a local mortician in the stiff hand of a gambler. That way, if the man happened into a poker game on the other side he would at least take the first pot.

Even more unusual was the attempted grave robbery at Eternal Valley Memorial Park in Newhall last week. Determined thieves dug down and opened one of two concrete vaults at the grave site of a suspected drug dealer. Robert R. Hagen, who was shot and killed July 24 in Van Nuys while sitting at the wheel of his customized Mercedes-Benz, was rumored to have been entombed with a jewel-studded watch and pistol.

After opening the upper vault, which was empty and reserved for Hagen’s mother, the grave robbers gave up and left. Police are still searching for whoever left behind surgical masks, gloves, a pick and shovel.

The crime shook up cemetery officials and Hagen’s family. Cemetery Manager Paul Neville said it was the first attempted grave robbery at Eternal Valley since the cemetery opened in 1955.

Neville said Hagen was buried with several rings, a pistol and a watch encrusted with jewels. Hagen’s mother disputed that, saying her son’s casket contained only an earring, a ring, two bracelets and a pistol that was a collector’s item.

Whatever the truth, Hagen was not alone in trying to disprove the cliche that you can’t take it with you. The story of Sandra Ilene West, who was buried in a lace nightgown at the wheel of her red Ferrari, received nationwide attention in 1977. The service for the 37-year-old Beverly Hills woman became so famous in the funeral industry that a legend has grown up around it. One funeral director tells the story of a man sitting on a hill nearby when the car was lowered into the ground.

“Now that’s livin’,” he is said to have remarked.

Of those who try to take it with them, Gypsies appear to try harder than most, sometimes filling the caskets so full that it is difficult to close the lid.

Like other traditions in Gypsy culture, funerals are colorful affairs, said Ron Hast of Abbott and Hast Mortuary in Los Angeles, which used to be one of the few mortuaries that would allow Gypsy services but no longer does. Mourners arrive the night before the burial and throw a barbecue. They may stay all night, and when it comes time for the burial the casket is loaded with things the dead person will need on his or her journey to heaven.

Included might be cash, several changes of underwear and a toothbrush, as well as items of particular meaning to the individual.

“The Gypsies will bury a woman with a phone if she loved to talk on the telephone,” said Hast, editor of the funeral industry magazine Mortuary Management.

Robert Franke, manager of Gates, Kingsley & Gates mortuary in Canoga Park, said he buried a Gypsy king with 10 $100 bills fanned out in his fingers. As with the Hagen burial, rumor soon embellished the tale of the Gypsy king’s burial. When the rumor worked its way back to Franke, the story was that the man’s casket contained $100,000. “I started squashing the story” out of fear that it might encourage grave robbers, he said.

There is a popular, though likely apocryphal, story in the industry of a funeral director who offered to substitute a personal check for cash buried with a Gypsy. Possibly because of the difficulty of cashing third-party checks, the offer was rejected.

Grave robbery remains rare, however, in part because of its difficulty. Some caskets have locks, and all are surrounded by a cement casing one or two inches thick. When the grave is closed, the ground is tamped down with machinery, making it difficult to dig up. A small crew of workmen would be needed to open the grave.

“I’ve been in the business 34 years and I remember only three or four incidents,” Hast said. One involved a man in Redondo Beach several years ago who dug up his lover’s body and hid it in the wall of his mobile home.

Nonetheless, cemeteries are concerned about the possibility of theft and do not publicize items buried with the dead, said Ted Brandt, vice president of community affairs for Forest Lawn Memorial Park, which owns five cemeteries in Southern California.

Some people like to keep their pets beside them in death, as in life. Neville of Eternal Valley recalled wedging into a Northridge animal lover’s casket 30 cardboard boxes containing the cremated remains of dogs and cats that had died in the years before the woman’s 1986 death.

“Her clothes were covered with dog and cat hair,” he said of the woman, whom he declined to name. “I was going to clean them, but the family said no.”

Other unusual burials include the “very, very famous politician” who Franke said asked to be buried with a fifth of premium Russian vodka, maybe in the belief that merchandise produced by godless communism would not be stocked in heaven. Franke declined to identify the man.

Some people apparently fear that they will grow lonely or cold in the grave. Franke recalled burying one man with an afghan over him and a flashlight switched on. “I guess he didn’t want to be in the dark,” Franke said.

Others are lowered into the ground with their transistor radios playing.

Despite the modern tendency toward frugal funerals, Neville said “more and more people” are packing loved ones’ caskets with personal items. This is especially true if the family is informed that putting mementos in the casket is proper. Funeral directors say they usually discourage placing valuable jewelry in the casket, not so much out of fear of robbery, but out of a concern that such items should be passed down to living members of the family.

Despite the increasing number of people taking their treasures to the grave, some people are more concerned with escape than with potential grave robbers. They ask Neville how to get out in case they come back to life after being buried.

“I say, ‘You might want to get a hard wood casket then,’ ” he said. (Metal caskets are sealed with a crank making them impossible to open from the inside.) Then he adds, “I don’t think you’ll get very far.”