Forgotten graves of notable Indianapolis people

Memorial Day, which is Monday, May 25, is earmarked as a time to remember the dead, particularly the war dead but everyone else, too. Cemeteries are busy places on Memorial Day. Here are brief synopses of the unusually interesting occupants of 17 graves in cemeteries in and around Indianapolis.

Alice V. Adams (1917-1958), Crown Hill Cemetery, 700 W. 38th St., Sec. 66, Lot 453.

The V is for Vonnegut. She was the writer Kurt Vonnegut's sister. More than that, she was his muse. She was tall and beautiful, and she got jokes. She died of cancer two days after her husband was killed in a train wreck.

Here's from Vonnegut's 1976 novel "Slapstick": "The museums in children's minds, I think, automatically empty themselves in times of utmost horror — to protect the children from eternal grief. For my own part, though: It would have been catastrophe if I had forgotten my sister at once. I had never told her so, but she was the person I had always written for. She was the secret of whatever artistic unity I had ever achieved. She was the secret of my technique."

William "Dick the Bruiser" Afflis (1929-1991), Washington Park North Cemetery, 2702 Kessler Blvd W. Drive, Garden of Resurrection mausoleum, Sec. A, Crypt 77 D, Level 4.

He was a nationally known professional wrestler during the 1960s and 1970s and dominated the Indianapolis wrestling market with his tough-guy scowl and gravelly voice. Although pro wrestling was theatrical, the Bruiser's voice was authentic — the result of a football injury to his larnyx. In the 1950s Afflis played four seasons for the Green Bay Packers. He was 62 when he died, in Largo, Fla., of internal bleeding. He had been at his winter home with wife Louise, lifting weights, when a blood vessel in his esophagus ruptured.

Francis Hillman "Scrapper" Blackwell (1903-1962) New Crown Cemetery, 2101 Churchman Ave., Sec. 20, Row 8, Lot 26.

He was a guitar hero in the clubs along Indiana Avenue who, with the piano player Leroy Carr, had some nationwide hits, such as "Blues Before Sunrise." The duo's "Naptown Blues" (1929) popularized a term that would later haunt Indianapolis, but its creators obviously meant no disrespect. Consider the lyrics: "When you get to Naptown, the blues won't last very long. Because they have their pleasure, and they sure do carry on."

Blackwell quit music after Carr's early death in 1935, and when Blackwell died, in 1962, The Indianapolis Star notice read simply: "Francis Blackwell, 1116 North Capitol Avenue, was found shot in the chest in the alley at the rear of 527 West 17th Street."

Wilbur Brink (1919-1931), Crown Hill Cemetery, 700 W. 38th St., Sec. 70, Lot 1062.

Brink is the only person to die as the result of an auto racing accident at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway while not on the IMS grounds. He was 12 years old, playing in his front yard at 2316 Georgetown Road when, on lap 162, a wheel came loose from the race car driven by defending 500 champion Billy Arnold as Arnold crashed in Turn Four. The wheel bounded across the road, struck Brink and killed him. Arnold and his riding mechanic, Spider Matlock, were injured but not seriously.

A few years ago Brink's death became the subject of a song written and performed by a Belgian pop band, "Bad Luck for Wilbur Brink."

Ernest F. Eppen (1914-2006), Crown Hill Cemetery, Sec. 46B, Lot 538.

You know that Speedway tradition of residents allowing race fans to park their cars in their yards for, like, $10? The Eppen family, which owned property on Georgetown Road even before there was an Indianapolis 500 Mile Race, may well have started it. And Ernest Eppen was surely the dean of it.

The Eppens started parking cars for the 1919 race — the 500 was in its eighth year, Ernest Eppen was in his fifth. He continued the practice until 2003.

Throughout his long life, Eppen never attended the race or even the time trials. "That was a time to work," he said in a 1995 interview with The Star. "We needed the money. Prosperity — there wasn't too much up and down the street. We could hear the racing cars, but mostly we were too busy working."

Frances Farmer (1913-1970), Oak Lawn Memorial Gardens, 9700 Allisonville Road, Fishers, Our Lady of Miraculous Medal Chapel mausoleum, first level.

She was the "golden-bright Seattle high school girl" (New York Times) who became a movie star in the 1930s but whose unstable, tempestuous behavior landed her in an insane asylum where she may have been lobotomized.

She has since become a cult hero. Jessica Lange starred in a movie about her. Kurt Cobain wrote and performed a song about her. She ended up in Indianapolis, where she hosted an afternoon movie at a local TV station and interviewed celebrities passing through town. She died here at age 57.

Albertina Forrest (1870-1904), Crown Hill Cemetery, Sec. 25, Lot 230.

Hers is the cemetery's most forlorn grave marker and one of the fancier ones, too, with its Ionic columns, cornice of granite, broad steps — basically it's a mini-Greek temple. A "perpetual mourner" is prostrate on its altar.

Forrest died at 31. She had taught at Butler and written a treatise called "The Cry, 'Back to Christ': Its Implication."

Her husband built the monument, indicating he was seriously torn up. He later remarried, but when he died, in 1930, he was buried next to Albertina in a grave that remains unmarked.

Robert Gay (died March 1863), Crown Hill Cemetery, Sec. 10, Lot 697.

Gay was a Civil War soldier sentenced to death for being a deserter. A firing squad did the job in Indianapolis as Gay sat upon his own coffin and sort of braced himself. Moments earlier he had given a short speech that ended with instructions to the firing squad: "To you who will fire at me I would say, take your aim well. Fire at my breast; (laying his hand with cap in it on his heart;) that is the place. Hold on the spot firmly. I want to die quickly. Don't let me suffer. Hold steady on the spot, and shoot at my breast." The Indianapolis Journal described in detail the execution. It's a must read.

Archie Greathouse (died 1936), Crown Hill Cemetery, Sec. 37, Lot 809.

He was an early 20th century African-American business and civic leader from Indianapolis who owned the Greathouse Emporium bar on Indiana Avenue. In the 1920s, Greathouse sued to stop the racial separation that was being pushed by the leaders of Indianapolis' public schools. Greathouse and others wrote to the school board that "no one section of the population can be isolated and segregated without taking from it the advantage of the common culture."

Greathouse's lawsuit failed, and in 1927 the city's black high school students were forced out of the schools they had been attending and into the brand new, all-black Crispus Attucks High School.

Leon Johnson (1939-1999), Floral Park Cemetery, Faith Sec., Lot 128, Grave 3.

An Indianapolis Westsider, he was a prolific bank robber during the 1960s and '70s. He was the younger brother of Morris Lynn Johnson, the city's greatest bankrobber (Dillinger included).

His daughter, Leah Perryman, in a Star interview a week after her father's death, recalled being in Florida with her father and uncle in the late 1960s, waiting in their trailer until the men came home from one of their missions, laden with cash money. Leah was 12.

"We was all sitting around the floor, in a circle, you know, and we had this huge pile of money in the middle. And we was counting it up, you know, and stacking it up and putting it in paper bags. We filled 10 paper bags. I remember my hands getting all dirty and grimy from it." Leah said. "My dad was so smart. He could do anything."

On top of all that Johnson at one point had a pet monkey that rode on his shoulders as he drove.

Josephine Jones (died 1865), Crown Hill Cemetery, Sec. 4, Lot 89.

She was the first African-American buried in Crown Hill. She was the daughter of one of the cemetery's grave diggers. Nearly 150 years later her grave is still unmarked. There is no headstone. Nothing more is known about her, not even her birth date.

H. Joe Letterman (1915-1973), Crown Hill Cemetery, Sec 46, Lot 117.

David Letterman's father, who had a florist shop at 56th and Keystone, died of a heart attack at 57. His son was 27. The H. stands for Harry, which is the name David Letterman gave his son. David Letterman once told a writer for Esquire that his father was "the circus." "He was the show. When he walked through a room the lamps would rattle."

Jimmy McClure (1917-2005), Crown Hill, Section 212 Lot 762.

Table tennis world doubles champion 1936-38; U.S. singles champion 1934, 1939; later, through the 1970s, he operated a shop in Broad Ripple that sold tennis equipment.

When McClure died, fan Berndt Mann of Columbus, Ohio, wrote this poem about him: "Many times I've watched with deep delight/Those grainy films in black and white/Delighting in the legend's play/I watched them once again last night/Will watch them still again today/But this time watch with joy and grief,/With joy, still marveling at his play/With grief, now knowing Death the thief/Has stolen the Legend McClure away."

Isaac "Tuffy" Mitchell (1913-1970), B'nai Torah Cemetery, 2455 S. West Street, Row J, Grave 29.

During a crime career that likely lasted five decades, the Russian-born numbers kingpin was arrested 40 times, mostly on gaming charges, and convicted nine times.

He was 5-1 and weighed 130 pounds. He got his nickname while he was an amateur boxer. He was free on bond in 1970 when he fell over dead of a heart attack while shooting pool at 2:30 a.m. at the Happy Landing Tavern in Ravenswood. He had $802 in his pockets. In his '69 Buick were found 10 "4 play poker" games, a pool cue, some billiard chalk, two radios, a 20-piece dinnerware set, some false teeth marked "Tuff" and four Bibles.

Four hundred people attended his funeral.

Avriel Shull (1931-1976), Crown Hill Cemetery, mausoleum, NICH 47-D.

She was not an architect, but that didn't stop her from designing radical and beautiful mid-century modern houses with flat, overhanging roofs, vaulted ceilings and lots of glass and fieldstone. Shull left her biggest imprint in Carmel in the Thornhurst neighborhood, a few blocks west of Carmel's Downtown. More than a dozen of her houses can be found there.

Contact Star reporter Will Higgins at (317) 444-6043. Follow him on Twitter @WillRHiggins.