Why do I believe that Kim Carlyle is still alive?

Because of the stories my grandfather told me...

For over 30 years, my grandfather, Otis "Pop-Pop" Weaver, was a cemetery worker at the Hillside Memorial Park in Los Angeles. He began working there in 1951, the year Al Jolsen's body was moved from Beth Olam Cemetery and re-interred under the soaring domed memorial at Hillside. Pop-Pop always spoke of the wonder of the "Moses and the Tablets" mural above Jolsen's sarcophagus, and he spent as many moments as he could strolling the grounds near its peaceful waterfall.

Some of my fondest childhood memories are of the weeks I would visit Pop-Pop over the summer and share orange Popsicles with him on the swing that hung from his wide back porch. He would sit me on his knee in the early evenings and tell me stories of all the rich and famous people he'd watched be carried to their final resting place. He'd been there to see off Jack Benny and Moe Howard, Eddie Cantor and Jeff Chandler. But he said the funeral he would always remember most was that of "Honey Vicarro" star, Kim Carlyle.

According to the mourners, Kim had never looked more beautiful. It was as if the masters at Tussuad's had captured her in a moment of perfect youth and radiance, and preserved it for all time. The waves of her long strawberry hair (so like my own, Pop-Pop would remind me with a wink every time he told the story), framed her face as if she were a sleeping princess, and there seemed to be no hint of death that clung anywhere about her.


As I grew older and was better able to understand the ways of adults, Pop-Pop told me more details about the funeral. He told me that never before had he seen so many grown men cry over a woman's grave. Celebrities, politicians, captains of industry, they all came to say their final farewells to their beloved "Honey". He said that Kim's ex-lover, Gavin Hurrell - who looked as if he'd been drinking heavily for days - even threw himself on the casket, at one point, inconsolably crying, "I'm sorry..." and calling out for his "Bunny Love," over and over again.

But no man cut a sorrier figure, Pop-Pop said, than Kim's former co-star, Cliff DiMarco. He stood alone and at a distance from the other mourners, chain-smoking, watching the service with a look my grandfather described as both bewildered yet haunted. Pop-Pop would find him later, totally bereft, staring at the waterfalls near Jolsen's memorial. It was there that these two men, who would prove to be so important in my life, would strike up a fateful conversation that would put me on a path of discovery and lead me to the creation of this website.

More to come in Part II...