Robert Mitchum

Posted in Cremated, Sharon Hills Odd Fellows Cemetery with tags , on July 28, 2025 by Cade

August 6, 1917 – July 1, 1997

Robert Charles Durman Mitchum grew up on a farm in Delaware. A prankster and somewhat rebellious child, by the time Mitchum was 14 he had lived in South Carolina, Connecticut, Delaware, Philadelphia, and New York City with various parts of his family. He was expelled from at least 2 schools and ran away from home a number of times. He lived for a while hopping freight cars and was arrested for vagrancy and put on a chain-gang (from which he claims to have escaped). He worked his way across the country digging ditches, picking up odd jobs and boxing semi-professionally before suffering a career-ending facial injury. 

THEN he became one of Hollywood’s greatest antiheroes.

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Dave Peverett

Posted in Woodlawn Cemetery (FL) with tags , , on June 16, 2025 by Cade

April 16, 1943 – February 07, 2000

As legend would have it, young Dave Peverett and his brother, John, parlayed their active childhood imaginations into one of the best-selling rock groups of the 1970s. While playing a word game with John, Dave coined the nonsense word “foghat”. This led to an imaginary friend named “Junior Foghat” and the adoption of the personal persona of “Lonesome Dave.” Both would shape much of the rest of Peverett’s life.

Born in London, in 1943, Dave Peverett grew up idolizing blues musicians like Chuck Berry. He learned to play guitar and eventually joined the band, Savoy Brown, in the late 1960s. The band found some decent success, releasing 5 albums during Peverett’s tenure. By the early 1970s, Lonesome Dave wanted to embark on something new, so he and fellow Savoy bandmates Roger Earl and Tony Stevens teamed up with guitarist, Rod Price, and formed a new band…called Foghat.
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Pete Moore

Posted in Palm Memorial Park Northwest with tags , , , on May 19, 2025 by Cade

November 19, 1938 – November 19, 2017

When Motown records was founded in 1959, there was the Miracles.

The 5 Detroit performers were the first to catch producer Berry Gordy’s eye and convince him to start his own label. Founded by childhood friends, Smokey Robinson, Ronnie White and Pete Moore, the Miracles would become the prototype for all successful Motown acts to follow.

In addition to providing bass vocals for the group, Warren “Pete” Moore served as one of the talented songwriters for, not only the group, but also many of Motown’s biggest stars. Moore wrote the Miracles’ multi-platinum megahit, 1965’s “Tracks of My Tears” as well as their post-Smokey disco anthem, “Love Machine.” Over Moore’s prolific writing career, his songs were recorded by countless legends including Aretha Franklin, Michael Jackson, Marvin Gaye, the Temptations and the Rolling Stones.

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Rudi Maugeri

Posted in Palm Memorial Park Northwest with tags , on May 12, 2025 by Cade

January 27, 1931 – May 7, 2004

Rudi Maugeri was a co-founder and lead/baritone singer for the Canadian doo-wop group, the Crew Cuts. Formed in school in Toronto, Rudi and his bandmates originally performed as the Candelaires around Ontario and New York. While appearing on a Cleveland radio program, the disc jockey referred to them as “the Crew Cuts” – citing their distinctive and uniform hairstyle – and the name stuck.

Maugeri wrote a number of songs for the Crew Cuts, including their first minor hit “Crazy ‘Bout You, Baby” which was later featured in the Off-Broadway hit, Forever Plaid. But, the Cuts’ biggest success came from pop covers of R&B songs like “Earth Angel” and “Sh-Boom”.  The latter becoming their biggest hit.

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Jimmy Ruffin

Posted in Palm Memorial Park Northwest with tags , , on April 28, 2025 by Cade

May 07, 1936 – November 17, 2014

Jimmy Ruffin was an R&B and soul singer who performed from a young age alongside his little brother, David. By the time he was 25, Jimmy found himself in Detroit and was a session singer in the Motown hit machine. He recorded his own stuff, too, though he was unable to find a hit. After a stint in the U.S. Army, Jimmy returned to Motown and was briefly considered as a replacement for the vacant lead singer role for the Temptations. That job eventually went to his brother, but Jimmy forged ahead as a solo artist.

In 1966, he recorded what would become his biggest hit. “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted” became a Top 10 hit on both the R&B and Billboard Hot 100 charts. It would remain his enduring signature song for decades.

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William Wilberforce

Posted in Westminster Abbey with tags on January 27, 2025 by Cade

August 24, 1759 – July 29, 1833

The OG social justice warrior, William Wilberforce was a British politician and social reformer whose religious conversion directed him toward causes to right injustice. He was most notably a staunch advocate and very public face for the campaign to abolish slavery in Britain.

Wilberforce was raised and educated in Yorkshire. He attended St. John’s College at Cambridge where he devoted more time to the typical extracurricular activities of the average college boy than to his studies. Despite his general lack of desire to be in school (he had inherited money from his family and didn’t necessarily need to go to university), he received a degree and embarked on a career in politics.

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Milton Hershey

Posted in Hershey Cemetery with tags on December 2, 2024 by Cade

September 13, 1857 – October 13, 1945

At the age of 14, Milton Snavely Hershey began an apprenticeship with a confectioner in his native Pennsylvania. To say that this experience stuck with him would be the understatement of the century. Hershey founded a number of small confectionary companies – focusing primarily on caramels – and traveled the country learning new processes and ingredients. By the time he was in his mid 20s, he returned to Lancaster, Pennsylvania and founded the Lancaster Caramel Company.

In less than two decades, the Lancaster Caramel Company had 2 factories and over a thousand employees. It was a wild success. In 1900, Hershey sold the company and used the money to start another business…this time focusing on a new chocolate recipe he was tinkering with.

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Porter Wagoner

Posted in Woodlawn Memorial Park (TN) with tags , , on November 11, 2024 by Cade

August 12, 1927 – October 28, 2007

Porter Wagoner was an American country music star and television presenter who was known as much for his music as for his dazzling Nudie suits and his blonde pompadour hair cut. His eponymous syndicated television show ran from 1960 to 1981 and gave the world country and western hits, classic gospel performances, comedy…and Dolly Parton.

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Marcel Proust

Posted in Père Lachaise Cemetery with tags , on October 28, 2024 by Cade

July 10, 1871 – November 18, 1922

If you have one shot at a novel that vaults you into the discussion of “most influential authors of the century”…you had better make it good. You had better make it epic. You had better make it monumental.

Marcel Proust did just that.

Published over the course of more than a dozen years and seven volumes, Proust’s monumental novel, À la Recherche du Temps Perdu (In Search of Lost Time), became one of the first and lasting great works of the 20th Century. The themes he explored over the novel’s 4000+ pages ranged from memory and homosexuality to vanity and despair and changed the trajectory of the modern novel.
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Gordon Cooper

Posted in Cremated with tags , , on October 21, 2024 by Cade

March 6, 1927 – October 4, 2004

One common denominator amongst pilots – test pilots, in particular – is a love for speed. The need to go faster. To push limits. This desire is ideal when you are piloting prototype jets that have never been piloted before. It’s essential if you want to be crazy enough to strap yourself to a 260,000 pound rocket and launch into the unknown vastness of space.

Leroy Gordon Cooper Jr. loved speed. Thanks to his parents’ love for planes and his father’s service as a military pilot, Gordon learned to fly at a young age. He earned his first certification at the age of just 16. He enlisted in the United States Marines after high school, but World War II ended before he could be deployed. He was eventually discharged from the Marines and joined the Army ROTC (Reserve Officers’ Training Corp) in college. He entered flight school for the U.S. Air Force and earned a degree in Aerospace Engineering. He naturally became a test pilot alongside friend and classmate, Gus Grissom, and logged more than 2,000 hours as an experimental pilot. 

In 1959, Cooper received orders to report to Washington D.C. It was there he found out he was on the short list for a new manned space program called Project Mercury.
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