11 famous people who are buried in Virginia

The number of famous people buried in Virginia is higher than you might think. Here are 11 names you’re sure to recognize. 

When it comes to where famous people are buried, Virginia rivals other notable places like Los Angeles, Paris, and London (not that it’s a competition … that would be weird and morbid …). This is primarily due to two specific locations: the Arlington National Cemetery, and the Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond. Everyone from actors to politicians to musicians are buried in the hallowed grounds of these cemeteries, plenty of whom you’ll recognize.

We could likely fill multiple articles with the names and stories of famous people who are buried in Virginia, but we decided to focus on 11 individuals to start. If you want to scroll through a more complete list of famous graves in the state—like, say, one that stretches over 130 pages—click here.

1. Thurgood Marshall 

Supreme Court justice and American civil rights attorney Thurgood Marshall Sr. is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Marshall, who was the first African American justice on the Supreme Court, previously led the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. He was known for his deeply held liberal beliefs and for being instrumental in ending racial segregation.

2. John F. Kennedy

President John F. Kennedy’s grave in Arlington National Cemetery is marked by The Eternal Flame, a specially designed burner that was lit by Jacqueline Kennedy following his death, which still burns to this day. JFK was the 35th president of the United States and was assassinated on November 22, 1963. He previously represented his home state of Massachusetts in Congress before being elected as the youngest and first Roman Catholic president.

3. Robert F. Kennedy

Robert F. Kennedy is buried beside his younger brother, John F. Kennedy, at Arlington National Cemetery. RFK served as the US attorney general from 1961 until 1964, after which he was elected as a senator from the state of New York in 1965. He held this seat until he was assassinated in June 1968 during his run for the Democratic presidential nomination.

4. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

Also buried alongside John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy is Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who was married to JFK from 1953 until his death in 1963. She was a writer, socialite, and book editor who had a keen interest in American culture, arts, and history, among many other topics. Jackie was a fashion icon and died in 1994 at the age of 64.

5. Medgar Evers

Medgar Evers was a US Army veteran and American civil rights activist who worked to overturn racial segregation and create new opportunities for African Americans at the University of Mississippi. He was also the NAACP’s first field secretary in Mississippi, and he strove to enforce voting rights for African Americans.

He was murdered at his home in Jackson in 1963 by a member of the White Citizens’ Council. It took 30 years for Evers’s killer to finally be convicted of his crime. Evers was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Click here to learn more about Evers’s assassination and the subsequent murder trials.

6. Patsy Cline

Country music legend and Virginia native Patsy Cline is buried at Shenandoah Memorial Park in Winchester. Fans and visitors typically leave pennies at her grave site as a token of their appreciation. Cline began her singing career as a teenager, and she got her big break in 1957 after she sang “Walkin’ After Midnight” on the “Talent Scouts” show. There were interim periods where she ebbed and flowed in popularity, but the release of her single “Crazy” in 1961 cemented her as one of the most iconic and influential artists of her time.

Cline died at the age of 30, along with fellow country singers Hawkshaw Hawkins and Cowboy Copas, in a plane crash in 1963. Read more about her life and legacy here.

7. John Glenn

Astronaut John Glenn was laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery in 2017. He was 95 years old when he died. Glenn was a Marine Corps aviator prior to his career as an astronaut, and he went on to serve as a U.S. senator in Ohio from 1974 to 1999. He was one of NASA’s first astronauts, and he became the first American to orbit Earth during the Friendship 7 mission of 1962.

8. Mary Winston Jackson 

Aerospace engineer and mathematician Mary Winston Jackson worked at the Langley Research Center in Hampton under the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), which was later followed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). When Jackson first started working at the computing division in 1951, she was in a segregated area. Seven years later, after enrolling in engineering classes, Jackson became the first Black female engineer at NASA. Her story, along with the stories of Katherine Johnson and Dorothy Vaughn, is the subject of the 2016 book “Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Who Helped Win the Space Race,” and the movie adaptation, “Hidden Figures,” released the same year.

Jackson died in 2005 at the age of 83 and was buried in Bethel AME Church Cemetery in Hampton.

9. Maureen O’Hara

Hollywood actress Maureen O’Hara died in 2015 and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. She was 95 years old. O’Hara’s most notable period of her career occurred between the 1940s and 1960s, when she starred in “Miracle on 34th Street,” “Rio Grande,” “The Quiet Man,” and “The Parent Trap,” to name a select few. She was born and raised in Ireland and moved to London, England as a teenager to pursue a career in acting. O’Hara was known for performing her own stunts, which wasn’t common for actresses to do back then.

10. Henrietta Lacks 

When Henrietta Lacks died in 1951 at the age of 31 due to cervical cancer, she didn’t know that she would go on to become famous in the world of modern medicine. Her cancer cells became the primary source of the HeLa cell line, one of the most important cell line developments in medical research.

The cells were recovered from a biopsy she had done while receiving cervical cancer treatment at Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins Hospital, but consent was not required back then for recovery. Her family would not find out about what happened until 1975, and they’ve never been compensated for the extraction or use of Lacks’s cells.

She was buried in Clover, VA, in an unmarked grave. Click here to learn more about Lacks’s story.

11. Dr. Anita Newcomb McGee

Dr. Anita Newcomb McGee was a medical doctor and the founder of the US Army Nurse Corps. In 1898, she was appointed the Acting Assistant Surgeon of the US Army, and she was known for making frequent volunteer trips to treat US soldiers in war-torn areas across the world. When she died in 1940 at the age of 75, she was buried in Arlington National Cemetery alongside her father, Simon Newcomb, who was a noted astronomer.

This article first appeared on Good Info News Wire and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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