DeFore Star Back Among Thorns
Thorny, star of the rose garden, is back among the thorns in Westwood Village--at least for now.
But it was a close call for the five-pointed granite plaque that hangs from a rosebush in Westwood Village Memorial Park as a tribute to the late actor Don DeFore.
DeFore, famed for his role as jovial next-door neighbor Thorny Thornberry in “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet,” died 19 months ago. His family honored him by attaching the engraved star to a rose branch where his ashes are scattered.
Bushes in the tiny rose garden have become festooned since the 1960s with nearly 300 brass plaques listing names of those whose ashes have been spread nearby.
But when gardeners pruned this year, they found that the garden had grown too popular. Brass tablets and chains were caught in boughs. People were placing photographs and other objects among the blooms. Don DeFore’s hefty granite star threatened to break a branch.
“It was getting out of hand,” recalls cemetery manager Barbara Parker, who ordered that the bush memorial be replaced with a more traditional concrete-and-brass monument--one suitable for name inscriptions that would sell for $156 each.
Cemetery workers told families about the change. But they missed Marion DeFore. And when she discovered on Father’s Day that her husband’s star was missing, she feared the worst.
“I think it’s been stolen,” said the 77-year-old Brentwood resident, a Westside real estate agent, after futilely seeking information from cemetery workers about the star.
But Parker found it tucked away the other day in an envelope at the cemetery office.
She returned it to DeFore and told her the star can be rehung on the rosebush through the end of the year. After that, though, it will have to go. So will all of the other small brass tablets that the cemetery has allowed to be rehung in the garden.
DeFore explained that her husband’s star was custom-made to resemble his star on Hollywood Boulevard. She told Parker her husband once worked with the cemetery’s most famous personality: Marilyn Monroe. “I have a picture of the two of them together,” she said.
The cemetery manager brightened. The cemetery has a room containing glass-enclosed niches a few steps from Monroe’s crypt, she said. Perhaps DeFore would like to purchase one of those for about $2,000 and display the star there?
“You could put the picture of Marilyn and your husband next to it,” Parker suggested.
No thanks, replied DeFore.
Back at the rosebush, DeFore carefully returned her husband’s star to its branch. Thorny would be pleased, she decided.
“He’s probably up there laughing,” she said.
