On this day 28 years ago 71-year-old George Swanson was buried in Irwin, Pennsylvania, just outside Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n
George was a beer distributor and had served in the U. S. Army in World War II, but it was neither of those life experiences that made him noteworthy.<\/p>\n
In fact it was what happened after his life was over that brought him a bit of fame.<\/p>\n
George Swanson was buried in Brush Creek Cemetery in his beloved Corvette.<\/p>\n
At first the cemetery refused to allow the unusual burial, fearing they would lose future clients, offended by Mr. Swanson\u2019s burial. But after several weeks of negotiations, they allowed the Corvette to accompany the deceased in the graveyard if it was drained of all fluids so that the environment would be protected. <\/p>\n
So, on May 25, 1994, George\u2019s widow drove her own Corvette in the funeral procession to Brush Creek Cemetery, George\u2019s ashes in the passenger seat next to her. Once there, George\u2019s ashes were placed in the driver\u2019s seat of his beloved 10-year-old Corvette (with only 27,000 miles), a cassette in the tape player was started and the car, with its deceased owner, was lowered into the grave, accompanied by the sound of Engelbert Humperdinck singing \u201cRelease Me\u201d for the 50 mourners in attendance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On this day 28 years ago 71-year-old George Swanson was buried in Irwin, Pennsylvania, just outside Pittsburgh. George was a beer distributor and had served in the U. S. Army in World War II, but it was neither of those life experiences that made him noteworthy. In fact it was what happened after his life […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2241,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Buried in Style - May 25, 1994","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oddities","category-personalities"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/coevette.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6TX4A-A7","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2239"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2240,"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2239\/revisions\/2240"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}