The Funeral and Casket Details of Mary Tyler Moore

Introduction

Mary Tyler Moore played two women who changed what American television thought a woman could be, and when her friends tried to describe her afterwards they almost all reached for the same thing, which was her smile. She died on 25 January 2017 at the age of 80, in Greenwich, Connecticut, the town she had lived in for years.

What followed was deliberately quiet. There was no cathedral, no broadcast service, no public farewell of any kind. About fifty people stood at a graveside in a Connecticut cemetery on a Sunday morning, while the rest of her audience left flowers at a bronze statue of her in Minneapolis.

The Life and Legacy of Mary Tyler Moore

She was born in Brooklyn in December 1936, and the family later moved to California, where she went to school in Los Angeles. From 1961 to 1966 she was Laura Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show, the wife who was funny in her own right rather than funny at her husband's expense. Then from 1970 to 1977 she was Mary Richards, a single woman working in a Minneapolis newsroom, in a series the Associated Press counted twenty nine Emmys for, a record that stood until Frasier passed it in 2002. Rhoda, Phyllis and Lou Grant all grew out of it.

With Grant Tinker she founded MTM Enterprises, which went on to make The Bob Newhart Show, Hill Street Blues, St. Elsewhere and WKRP in Cincinnati. She was in Thoroughly Modern Millie in 1967, and in 1980 Robert Redford cast her against everything audiences expected of her in Ordinary People, which brought an Academy Award nomination for best actress. The Television Academy inducted her into its Hall of Fame in 1986, and the Screen Actors Guild gave her its life achievement award in 2012. She had been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at 33, and in 1984 she became international chairman of JDRF.

The News of Mary Tyler Moore's Passing

Her publicist, Mara Buxbaum, announced the death on 25 January 2017 and said Moore had died with her husband and friends nearby. She was 80, and she had been living in Greenwich for years.

The death certificate recorded cardiopulmonary arrest. Listed with it were aspiration pneumonia, a shortage of oxygen reaching the tissues, and the type 1 diabetes she had carried since she was 33. Nothing about any of it was contested, and the family released no further medical detail.

The Funeral Arrangements for Mary Tyler Moore

She left no funeral instructions that were ever made public, which is unusual for someone who had spent decades being deliberate about how she was seen. What her family arranged was small and fast. On Sunday 29 January 2017 a private service was held at the graveside at Oak Lawn Cemetery in Fairfield, Connecticut. Fairfield police confirmed the burial, said officers were on hand, and reported that nothing disrupted it.

About fifty people came. Some people do settle this themselves and leave a record of it, and Elizabeth Taylor left written instructions for her own funeral, while Luke Perry had decided in advance how he wanted to be buried. Settling it in advance was what those two did, and the funeral planning Moore left behind was her family's to do in four days.

The Casket Details of Mary Tyler Moore

She was buried rather than cremated. No casket maker, model, material or finish has ever been made public, and with a private graveside service and no viewing, it probably never will be. A casket becomes a matter of public record when it is carried in front of cameras, which is the only reason the celebrity casket types used at the most famous funerals are known at all, and why the caskets and coffins chosen for the quietest ones stay unrecorded.

What was described instead was the ground. Entertainment Tonight reported that the family had taken a multi-grave plot looking out over a large pond. Photographs from the days afterwards showed the grave decorated with a statue of an angel and a great many flowers, white orchids and roses among them. The actor Jason Robards is buried in the same cemetery.

Attendees and Eulogies

The fifty or so mourners were family and friends, and the only one identified publicly was the actress Bernadette Peters, named by police among those who went in. No clergy, eulogies, readings or music were reported, and no order of service was released. It puts her in company with Audrey Hepburn and Burt Reynolds, both of whom were sent off in front of very few people.

The words that were spoken aloud were spoken elsewhere. Dick Van Dyke said the two of them had changed each other's lives for the better. Ed Asner, Cloris Leachman and Gavin MacLeod, who had shared the newsroom set with her, all spoke about her warmth rather than her timing. Redford praised the courage it had taken her to play against type, and Timothy Hutton, who had acted opposite her in Ordinary People, called her an inspiration. In early February her husband of thirty three years, Dr. S. Robert Levine, gave a statement to People describing a woman who had defended her own autonomy fiercely even as her health failed, and saying her light would not go out as long as people kept telling stories about her.

The Impact on Fans and the Industry

In Minneapolis, the city her character had worked in, people went looking for the statue. TV Land had put a bronze of her on Nicollet Mall, catching her mid toss with her tam in the air, and on the day she died fans gathered around it, laid flowers at the base, copied the hat toss and took photographs. One of them, Nichole Buehler, told the Associated Press that her first instinct on hearing the news was to go and find it. The statue had been moved indoors for the rebuilding of Nicollet Mall, and Meet Minneapolis opened its visitor centre so that people could leave flowers beside it anyway. Its chief executive, Melvin Tennant, said she had played the most famous television resident the city had ever had.

Outside the cemetery gate in Fairfield, a smaller group stood with handmade signs saying they loved her. The tributes from inside television came from the people who had worked alongside her, much as they did for Betty White and Lucille Ball, two other women who had spent their careers in American television comedy.

Legacy and Remembering Mary Tyler Moore

The grave she was given is modest, and so is its marker. Alongside the resting angel there is a small letter M, which the Daily Voice, reporting from Fairfield, likened to the wooden M that hung on the wall of Mary Richards's apartment. It is a quiet joke for anyone who knows where to look, and it is the only part of the burial that was made to be recognised. Steve Jobs was buried just as privately.

In February the New York State Senate adopted Resolution 589, celebrating the life and career of the actress it called America's Sweetheart, saying her sitcom roles had helped shape a new image of American womanhood, and directing that an engrossed copy be sent to her husband. JDRF, the diabetes charity she had led since 1984, opened a page for remembrances so that the people she had raised money for could write to her too. Her reach ran well past the newsroom set, in the way that Jane Goodall and Alex Trebek were mourned by people who had never met them either.

Conclusion

Mary Tyler Moore was buried on a Sunday morning in Fairfield, Connecticut, in front of about fifty people, under an angel and a letter M. Nobody has ever said what her casket was made of, and nobody involved seems to have thought it was anyone's business.

The distance between the size of her audience and the size of her funeral is the striking thing about it. She had spent her working life widening what a woman was allowed to be on screen, and then took up almost no room at all at the end, which fits the woman her husband described, the one who insisted on deciding things for herself right to the finish.

Sources

• Associated Press, obituary of Mary Tyler Moore by Frazier Moore, 25 January 2017
• Associated Press, fans pay respects to Mary Tyler Moore in Minneapolis, 25 January 2017
• Associated Press, notable reaction to the death of Mary Tyler Moore, 25 January 2017
• NBC Connecticut, Mary Tyler Moore laid to rest in Fairfield, 30 January 2017
• NBC New York, Mary Tyler Moore buried in Fairfield, Connecticut, 29 January 2017
• CBS New York, Mary Tyler Moore laid to rest during private ceremony in Connecticut, 30 January 2017
• Entertainment Tonight, Mary Tyler Moore's cause of death revealed, 30 January 2017
• Entertainment Tonight, statement from Dr. S. Robert Levine, 1 February 2017
• WPXI, Mary Tyler Moore cause of death revealed, January 2017
• Daily Voice, Mary Tyler Moore's final resting place in Fairfield
• JDRF, statement on the passing of international chairman Mary Tyler Moore, 25 January 2017
• Television Academy, Mary Tyler Moore Hall of Fame induction, 1986
• Meet Minneapolis, Minneapolis honors Mary Tyler Moore, January 2017
• New York State Senate, Resolution 589, adopted 14 February 2017

Image credits

Mary Tyler Moore on the red carpet at the 40th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards, 28 August 1988. Photograph by Alan Light, via Flickr, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/.