AUDASE

Next-Best Thing to Living Next Door to Your Idol

By JAMES BARRON NY TIMES

Victor Goines, a jazz saxophonist and clarinetist, at Woodlawn Cemetery, visiting the grave of Frankie Manning, an early creator of the Lindy hop.

During a break in a concert in the Bronx, Victor Goines, a jazz saxophonist and clarinetist, realized that he wanted to spend more time in that very place — a lot more time. Being there would put him close to people he idolized, like Duke Ellington, so he decided to spend $25,000 to buy the land behind the stage.

The land behind the stage was a cemetery plot, No. 10836 GR2-5, on a slope in the Hillcrest section of Woodlawn Cemetery. It is about 50 yards from where Ellington was buried in 1974, and he is not the only jazz great in the neighborhood.

"The location is prime real estate," said Mr. Goines, who is 52 and does not plan to occupy the plot anytime soon. "I’m looking at Miles Davis, who’s right across the same intersection, and Illinois Jacquet, who’s a couple of plots below where I am."

For Mr. Goines and others with similar ideas about where they want to be when they die, it is a different kind of hero worship, and puts a new twist on the real estate cliché "location, location, location." It could be the ultimate form of devotion, putting yourself closer to someone you admired than you ever were in life — especially if the only words you ever spoke to a favorite celebrity were "Can I have your autograph?" or "Can I take a selfie with you?" — or it could be the ultimate way to elevate oneself. You may not be famous, but proximity to someone who was could bestow some prestige.

Duke Ellington is among the many great entertainers and jazz musicians buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. Credit Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

It is one of those revealing, unexpected details of life, arranging in death to be slightly to the left or right of a Hollywood celebrity like Marilyn Monroe or a civil rights figure like Rosa Parks or someone else with a claim to fame when they were alive. It is not so surprising to people in the funeral business, though.

"It is much like it is if you want to live near your idols," said Patti Bartsche, the editor of American Cemetery and American Funeral Director magazines. "It has the same cachet — ‘I’m going to be buried near Lionel Hampton’ or ‘I’m going to be buried near Michael Jackson.’ You want to have a connection to somebody who’s important in your life. People choose to be buried, if they choose to be buried, in a place that has meaning to them."

There are amateur sculptors who arranged to be buried near famous ones like the avant-garde artist Alexander Archipenko. One woman who works at Woodlawn bought a space for her mother near the crypt of Celia Cruz, the Latin music star. And Jacob Reginald Scott, a businessman who was an amateur drummer before his death in 2012, has an image of a drummer on his tombstone, close to the grave of the bebop pioneer Max Roach.

"He had so many records of all the people who are there, Miles Davis and Duke Ellington," said his widow, Merri Hinkis-Scott. "He admired all the people he happens to be with now."

And there are people like Pauline Smith, a jazz fan and swing dancer who plans to be buried at Woodlawn near Ellington and Frankie Manning, one of the early creators of the Lindy hop.

Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn is the resting place of many well-known residents, like James S.T. Stranahan, known as the "Father of Prospect Park."

"Who knows what life is after death?" said Ms. Smith, a retired teacher who is 74 and lives in New Rochelle, N.Y. "Not knowing what it is, I want to enjoy the thing that brings the most joy to me in my life right now, so I want to be close to them."

That is the same motivation that prompted Marty Markowitz, the former Brooklyn borough president, to buy a plot at Green-Wood Cemetery adjacent to the graves of two prominent Brooklynites from the 19th century, one a mayor in the days when Brooklyn was a city on its own. "That’s what I wanted even before I became borough president," he said.

Not surprisingly, graves near the final resting places of famous people can carry premium prices. "Cemeteries love this kind of thing," said Thomas A. Parmalee, the executive director of the publishing company that produces Ms. Bartsche’s magazines and a newsletter, Funeral Service Insider. "When there’s a plot that’s in demand, they can advertise for more money, though I don’t think they go out and advertise because that’s not politically correct."

A crypt above Marilyn Monroe’s in a cemetery in Los Angeles had a winning bid of $4.6 million on eBay in 2009. The owner, a widow who wanted to pay off the $1 million mortgage her husband had left behind, moved his remains 23 years after he had been buried there. (In 1992, Hugh Hefner, the Playboy magazine founder, paid $75,000 for another crypt near Monroe’s.)

There were reports after Michael Jackson died in 2009 that prices for plots near his in Glendale, Calif., had jumped more than $2,000, to $9,900. And in 2006, after Rosa Parks died, the prices of crypts near where she and members of her family were entombed in a cemetery in Detroit climbed as much as $15,000.

A crypt above Marilyn Monroe’s in a cemetery in Los Angeles sold for $4.6 million on eBay in 2009.

Some cemeteries pre-empt price-gouging. After Jim Valvano, the Queens-born basketball coach who led North Carolina State to a national championship, died in 1993, Historic Oakwood Cemetery in Raleigh, N.C., laid a sidewalk next to his grave "so that no one could buy that property and sell it at a higher rate," said Robin Simonton, the executive director. "He was that important in Raleigh that there was a fear that someone would do it."

She said that the plots closest to Mr. Valvano’s grave — a short walk away, on the sidewalk — now go for $4,000. One was taken when Lorenzo Charles, the player whose dunk won the 1983 championship game, died in 2011 in a bus crash.

At Woodlawn in the Bronx, Susan Olsen, the cemetery’s historian, said that Ellington bought his plot in the late 1950s. The spot he chose was not far from the grave of the singer Florence Mills, who died in 1927 and whom Ellington elegized in the song "Black Beauty" the following year.

Over the years, other jazz figures were buried in the same section of the cemetery, which covers more than 400 acres. Then, in 2000, when the tap dancer Harold Nicholas died, "he wanted to be as close to Ellington as possible," Ms. Olsen said. "We contacted a family that had an unused space about 12 graves down and we bought it back from them for Harold Nicholas."

　

The vibraphonist Lionel Hampton had his people call the cemetery about being buried in the same area, Ms. Olsen said. The cemetery was so eager to welcome him that it cut down a tree before anyone made any arrangements. "We didn’t hear a word until the night before he died" at 94 in 2002, Ms. Olsen said, "and his agent called to make sure we still had the place."

Illinois Jacquet followed in 2004. And, several years later, Mr. Goines purchased his plot, with Ms. Olsen offering guidance.

"She was very strategic," said Mr. Goines, who will play a free concert at Woodlawn at 7 p.m. Wednesday with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and Wynton Marsalis. "She said you should buy here because you want people to be able to look up the hill and see you. She said: ‘Don’t get behind Illinois Jacquet. No one’s going to see you there; he has a huge headstone.’ She wanted me to be visible and well received and seen when people come into the place."