Finding the Grave of Chef Boyardee
For the past few years, my roommate and I have been wanting to go in search of the grave of the late great Hector Boiardi, also known as Chef Boyardee. His grave is in a cemetery nearby and we just never went in search of it, but always wanted to. Well, yesterday, I was exhausted, but after eating lunch and having a healthy dose of caffeine, I decided last minute at an intersection that today was the day and off we went to the cemetery.
Driving into this particular cemetery was… well… eh. Like, I love cemeteries, if I’m being honest. I love the history you can find there and especially the artistry of the stones and memorials. This particular cemetery, however, mostly just has flat stones. No real statues or anything else of that nature except for the mausoleums. Those are interesting structures at least. However, they’re not what I’m typically used to seeing in the local cemeteries. These ones are ones you walk into to find even more graves. This is how we came to find the grave of Hector Boiardi. He is located in one of these mausoleums.
When we walked inside (which I found myself surprised to be doing), it was very cold, and the lights in our part of the corridor came on automatically. It was silent, but also very nice. The walls were covered in beautiful square stones that had the names and dates of people who were interred there, and some of them had small flower vases with flowers in them, some had photos, and some had other medallions stuck to them. We ended up exploring the entire mausoleum, which was set up in the shape of a cross, and eventually found him in the last place we looked (of course). What I thought was rather whimsical was that someone left a fake flower stuck into the stone with a small Chef Boyardee can ornament hanging from it.
I was glad we found the grave of such an iconic chef. It was something to finally check off my list of things I wanted to do. Strange, I know, but happy I finally did it.
Do you ever go out of your way to look for people like this? Do you explore cemeteries? I’d love to know!