A 1938 Funeral Service Catches Up With 'Uncle Bush' Breazeale, Dead at 78
Burial Sunday for Man Who Held Rites Years Before Death
Click here to see original article as it appeared in 1943.
Special to The News-Sentinel
LOUDON, Feb. 10 - "Uncle Bush" Breazeale, who heard his funeral preached five years ago, is dead. He will be buried at 2 p.m. Sunday in the polished walnut coffin that he made from trees growing on his Roane County ridge place years ago. But there will be no funeral service again.
"Uncle Bush" died at 7:30 last night at his cabin in the hills where he had lived alone most of his 78 years. Quinn's, which gave it's services for the funeral on Sunday, June 26, 1938, today said that burial will be at Cave Creek Cemetery, near the little white church from which thousands had spread out, fanlike, over green hills at the time the 1938 sermon was preached by the Rev. Charles E. Jackson. The body will lie in state for an hour Sunday.
Planned Quiet One
The old fox-hunter had planned a quiet service five years ago. "Just want to hear what the preacher has to say about me while I'm alive," he had explained to A. Summers, editor of the weekly, Roane County Banner, in Kingston. Mr. Summers asked The News-Sentinel to "put a piece in the paper" about it. The story went around the world on wires.
Instead of the few "Uncle Bush" had expected, thousands gathered. Dogwood Lane was jammed with cars. Even the jovial, bewhiskered "corpse" had to get out of the hearse and walk to his coffin near the church. Traffic officers were called out, but could do little with the throng. Some women fainted in the crush.
'Mule' Was His Pal
"Uncle Bush" mopped his perspiring brow, fanned himself with a big fan and tried to smile. Afterwards he went back to his cabin and his constant companion for 17 years, "Mule" - just a mule that he had taught to do tricks since it was a colt.
Later, while on visits to Knoxville, "Uncle Bush" would drop by The News-Sentinel office to express his appreciation and to show some of the fan mail he had received from over the world. One card was from a girl in Germany. She wanted him to write to her. That was before the war.
He was an uncle of the late Martin Littleton, famous New York lawyer, and of Mrs. Rachel Vanderbilt Morgan. His father, D.W. Breazeale, married Sarah Littleton.
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