FOUND A GRAVE

Richard Wattis (1912 - 1975)

Richard Wattis was born in Wednesbury, Staffordshire. He attended King Edward’s School and Bromsgrove School, after which he worked for the electrical engineering firm William Sanders & Co (Wednesbury) Ltd. His uncle, William Preston (1874–1941), was the managing director and was the Conservative MP for Walsall from 1924 to 1929. After leaving the family business, Wattis […]

Richard Widmark (1914 - 2008)

Widmark was born in Sunrise Township, Minnesota, the son of Ethel Mae (née Barr) and Carl Henry Widmark. His father was of Swedish descent and his mother of English and Scottish ancestry. Widmark grew up in Princeton, Illinois, and also lived in Henry, Illinois for a short time, moving frequently because of his father’s work […]

Richie Evans (1941 - 1985)

Richie Evans An American racing driver who won nine NASCAR National Modified Championships, including eight in a row from 1978 to 1985. The International Motorsports Hall of Fame lists this achievement as “one of the supreme accomplishments in motorsports”. Evans won virtually every major race for asphalt modifieds, most of them more than once, including […]

Richie Havens (1941 - 2013)

Richie Havens Havens will best be remembered as the artist who opened the Woodstock music festival with a three hour set. At an early age, he began organizing his neighborhood friends into street corner doo-wop groups and was performing with The McCrea Gospel Singers at 16. At age 20, he moved to Greenwich Village where […]

Rick James (1948 - 2004)

Rick James The start of the 1990s brought with it a string of bizarre and sometimes horrific incidents for Rick James. His drug use was by this time public knowledge, as he was mainly addicted to cocaine; he later admitted to spending about US$7,000 per week on drugs for five years straight. In 1993, he […]

Rick Jason (1923 - 2000)

An only child of Jewish parents, Jason was expelled from several prep schools before graduating from Rhodes Preparatory School in Manhattan. Jason served in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II from 1943 to 1945. He also visited American troops serving in Vietnam on several USO tours in the late 1960s and early 1970s. After […]

Rick Nelson (1940 - 1985)

Rick Nelson Nelson dreaded flying but refused to travel by bus. In May 1985, he decided he needed a private plane and leased a luxurious, fourteen-seat, 1944 Douglas DC-3 that had once belonged to the DuPont family and later to Jerry Lee Lewis. The plane had been plagued by a history of mechanical problems. In […]

Rick Rude (1958 - 1999)

Rick Rude former wrestling superstar – commentator and manager “Ravishing” Rick Rude (Richard Rood) has died at the age of 41. Reports say Rude died on Tuesday, April 20, 1999 but the details surrounding his death remain unknown at press time. Unconfirmed reports say that he may have had a heart attack. Known for his […]

Rik Mayall (1958 - 2014)

Rik Mayall Richard Michael “Rik” Mayall (7 March 1958 – 9 June 2014) was an English comedian, writer, actor and voice-over artist. Mayall was best known for his comedy partnership with Ade Edmondson, for his energetic “post-punk” style of acting, and as a pioneer of alternative comedy in the early 1980s. He appeared in numerous […]

Rip Hawk (1930 - 2012)

Rip Hawk American professional wrestler best known by his ring name, Rip Hawk. He began his wrestling career in the Mid-Western United States before joining Jim Crockett Promotions (JCP) in the early 1960s. In the company, he teamed with fellow wrestler Swede Hanson as the “Blond Bombers,” and the duo held several championships. In the […]

Rise Stevens (1913 - 2013)

Stevens was born Risë Steenberg, on June 11, 1913, in New York City, the daughter of Sarah “Sadie” (née Mechanic) and Christian Steenberg, an advertising salesman. Her father was of Norwegian Lutheran descent and her mother was Jewish (of Polish and Russian descent). She had a younger brother, Lewis “Bud” Steenberg, who died in World […]

Rita Hayworth (1918 - 1987)

Rita Hayworth Margarita Carmen Cansino was born on October 17, 1918, in Brooklyn, New York, into a family of dancers. Her father, Eduardo was a dancer as was his father before him. He emigrated from Spain in 1913. Rita’s mother met Eduardo in 1916 and were married the following year. Rita, herself, studied as a […]

Ritchie Valens (1941 - 1959)

Ritchie Valens Born Richard Steven Valenzuela in a largely Hispanic community north of Los Angeles known as the San Fernando Valley, his father was a devotee of flamenco music and blues and instilled his love of music to Ritchie. At the age of eleven he started playing guitar and took it with him everywhere. During […]

River Phoenix (1970 - 1993)

Phoenix was born River Jude Bottom on August 23, 1970, in Madras, Oregon, the first child of Arlyn Sharon Dunetz (born 1944) and John Lee Bottom (born 1947). Phoenix’s parents named him after the river of life from the Hermann Hesse novel Siddhartha, and he received his middle name from the Beatles’ song “Hey Jude”. […]

Rob Knox (1989 - 2008)

Knox was born to Colin and Sally Knox in 1989. He was a pupil at Beths Grammar School, Bexley. He had been acting since the age of 11, and his first credited role was a small part in an episode of the ITV police drama The Bill and he also appeared in the Channel 4 […]

Robert Armstrong (1890 - 1973)

Born Robert William Armstrong in Saginaw, Michigan, lived in Bay City, Michigan until about 1902 and moved to Seattle, Washington. Armstrong studied to be a lawyer but gave it up to manage his uncle’s touring companies. He attended the University of Washington where he became a member of Delta Tau Delta International Fraternity. In his […]

Robert Abplanalp (1922 - 2003)

Robert Henry “Bob” Abplanalp, KHS (April 4, 1922 – August 30, 2003) was an American inventor and engineer who invented the modern form of the aerosol valve, the founder of Precision Valve Corporation and a political activist.  Born to Swiss immigrant parents in the Bronx, New York, Abplanalp graduated from Fordham Preparatory School in 1939 […]

Robert Alda (1914 - 1986)

Alda, an American of Italian descent, was born Alphonso Giuseppe Giovanni Roberto D’Abruzzo in New York, New York, the son of Frances (née Tumillo) and Antonio D’Abruzzo, a barber born in Sant’Agata de’ Goti, Benevento, Campania, Italy. He graduated from Stuyvesant High School in New York in 1930. He began as a singer and dancer […]

Robert Aldrich (1918 - 1983)

Aldrich was born in Cranston, Rhode Island, the son of Lora Lawson and newspaper publisher Edward Burgess Aldrich. He was a grandson of U.S. Senator Nelson W. Aldrich and a cousin to Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller. He was educated at the Moses Brown School in Providence, and studied economics at the University of Virginia where he […]

Robert Allman (1927 - 2013)

Robert Allman was born in Melbourne in 1927. He studied in Paris and sang at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden for three seasons from 1955. He then moved to Germany, where he sang in over a dozen opera houses. He also sang in opera houses including Zurich, New Orleans, Singapore and Vienna.  In 1965, he […]

Robert Altman (1925 - 2006)

Altman was born in Kansas City, Missouri, the son of Helen (née Matthews), a Mayflower descendant from Nebraska, and Bernard Clement Altman, a wealthy insurance salesman and amateur gambler, who came from an upper-class family. Altman’s ancestry was German, English and Irish; his paternal grandfather, Frank Altman, Sr., anglicized the spelling of the family name […]

Robert Alton Harris (1953 - 1992)

Robert Alton Harris was born at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, the fifth of nine children of Kenneth and Evelyn Harris. Kenneth was a sergeant in the United States Army who was awarded a Silver Star and Purple Heart for his service in World War II. Both parents were alcoholics, and Robert reportedly was born […]

Robert Anthony Buell (1940 - 2002)

Robert Anthony Buell Executed this morning by lethal injection for the July 1982 abduction and slaying of 11-year-old Krista Lea Harrison of Marshallville. Buell, a former loan specialist with the city of Akron’s Planning Department, was pronounced dead at 10:30 a.m. inside the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility near Lucasville. Buell, 62, gave a one-minute statement […]

Robert B. Parker (1932 - 2010)

Parker was born in Springfield, Massachusetts. In 1956 Parker married Joan H. Parker, whom he claimed to have met as a toddler at a birthday party. They spent their childhoods in the same neighborhood.  After earning a BA degree from Colby College in Waterville, Maine, Parker served as a soldier in the US Army Infantry […]

Robert B. Sherman (1925 - 2012)

Robert Bernard Sherman was born on December 19, 1925, in New York City, to Russian Jewish immigrants, Rosa and Al Sherman. Al Sherman, a songwriter, paid for Robert’s hospital delivery costs with a royalty check that had arrived that day for the song “Save Your Sorrow”. Al Sherman was to become a well known Tin […]

Robert Beatty (1909 - 1992)

Robert Beatty Born in Hamilton, Ontario, Beatty began his acting career in Britain in 1939.  Beatty’s film credits include: San Demetrio London (1943), Another Shore (1948), Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N. (1951), The Square Ring (1953), The Amorous Prawn (1962), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Where Eagles Dare (1968), The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976), Superman […]

Robert C. Baker (1921 - 2006)

A Lansing, New York native, Baker earned a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University in 1943 and then went on to major in Pomology at the university’s College of Agriculture. For his graduate work, Baker took his master’s degree at Penn State University and his doctorate at Purdue University. Baker was a member of the Alpha […]

Robert Carey (1894 - 1932)

Robert Carey Gangster. Robert Carey was born and raised in St. Louis. He became embroiled in the early gang wars there between the Egan’s Rats and the Hogans, fleeing to Detroit after the murder of Harry “Cherries” Dunn in September 1916. Thereafter Carey commuted across the Midwest commiting crimes with his childhood friends Fred “Killer” […]

Robert Conquest (1917 - 2015)

Conquest was born on 15 July 1917 in Great Malvern, Worcestershire, to an American father (Robert Folger Wescott Conquest) and an English mother (Rosamund Alys Acworth Conquest). His father served in an American Ambulance Service unit with the French Army in World War I, and was awarded the Croix de Guerre, with Silver Star in […]

Robert Culp (1930 - 2010)

Culp was born in Oakland, California to Crozier Cordell Culp, an attorney, and his wife, Bethel Martin (Collins) Culp. He graduated from Berkeley High School, where he was a pole vaulter and took second place at the 1947 CIF California State Meet. He attended the College of the Pacific, Washington University in St. Louis, San […]