Guess Who’s Coming to Die Here?

For this week's all-consuming neighborhoods issue, I went over some of the dead people who stay in Rock Creek Cemetery in Petworth: Teddy Roosevelt’s daughter, a former head of the National Geographic Foundation; and a guy responsible for giving the world Wonder Bread.

After I'd finished my piece, I learned, from a 1999 story in City Paper's own archives no less, that a non-dead fellow whose celebrity towers over the already dead is scheduled to someday lay his head in my 'hood : Gore Vidal has a burial plot and a stone with his name on it in the cemetery.

Gore Vidal in Petworth? Turns out he wants, or at least at some time wanted, to stay for all eternity next to Jimmie Trimble, his boyhood, umm, friend and fellow St. Albans alum. Trimble's already got his place in Rock Creek Cemetery.

Wonder what that'll do for property values in the neighborhood.