The Funeral and Casket Details of Patrick Swayze

Introduction

Patrick Swayze died on Monday 14 September 2009 at the age of 57, after living with pancreatic cancer. He was one of the most recognisable leading men of his generation, and the news travelled the way it does for a star whose films people watched over and over at home. What followed, though, was much quieter than the movies. There was no public funeral, no procession, no cathedral, and no televised farewell.

People searching for the funeral and casket details of Patrick Swayze usually find very little, and that is because very little was ever released. His family kept the arrangements to themselves, and the one gathering that was reported happened behind closed doors on a studio lot. Here is what credible outlets actually confirmed, and what has never been made public at all.

The Life and Legacy of Patrick Swayze

Swayze trained as a dancer before he was known as an actor, and he carried that training into everything he did on screen. He played Danny Zuko on Broadway in Grease, then broke through on film in Francis Ford Coppola's The Outsiders in 1983. Dirty Dancing followed in 1987 and turned him into a star overnight. Road House came in 1989, Ghost in 1990, Point Break in 1991, and To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar and Tall Tale both in 1995. A new generation found him again as the motivational speaker in Donnie Darko in 2001.

The industry noticed. CBS News reports that he was nominated for three Golden Globes, for Dirty Dancing, Ghost and To Wong Foo, and that People magazine named him its Sexiest Man Alive in 1991. He kept going back to the stage as well, returning to New York in Chicago in 2003 and appearing in Guys and Dolls in London in 2006. His last major role was the lead in The Beast, a cable series he filmed in 2009 while he was already ill.

The News of Patrick Swayze's Passing

News of his illness became public in March 2008, and he spoke about it openly in the time he had left, including a television interview with Barbara Walters in December 2008. When the end came, his publicist Annett Wolf released a short statement on the Monday evening. She said he "passed away peacefully today with family at his side", and she declined to give any further detail. Several outlets, including CBS News and Fox News, carried the same brief wording.

Lisa Niemi, his wife of two decades, told ABC News that she and his brother Donny Swayze were with him. No place of death has been confirmed. His memoir with Lisa Niemi, The Time of My Life, was already finished and waiting, and ABC News reported that the audio edition was scheduled for release on 29 September 2009, a fortnight after his death.

The Funeral Arrangements for Patrick Swayze

There was no public funeral. The one service that was reported took place in early October 2009, on a Sunday, at Sony Studios in Culver City, California, and it was private. NBC10 Philadelphia reported that Lisa Niemi organised it. No funeral director, officiant or venue hire was ever named, and no family statement described the service beforehand or afterwards.

In place of flowers the family asked for donations to the Patrick Swayze Pancreas Cancer Research Fund and to Stand Up To Cancer. That request was made through his representative and reported by NBC's TODAY. Beyond the charities and the location, nothing about the order of service was released, and no photographs from inside were published by any outlet we would cite.

The Casket Details of Patrick Swayze

There is no casket to describe, because Patrick Swayze was cremated. His death certificate recorded the cremation, a detail first reported by Us Weekly and carried by TV Guide in the days after he died. No casket maker, model, timber, finish or interior was ever released, and in a cremation of this kind there may never have been one to release.

No crematorium has ever been named, no urn has ever been described, and no resting place for his ashes has ever been made public by his family. If you want to understand the choices families weigh in a situation like this, our guide to celebrity casket types covers the ground, and our cremation urns show what families choose when there is no casket at all. The same silence surrounds Alex Trebek, who also died of pancreatic cancer and was also cremated with no public service.

Attendees and Eulogies

Several hundred people attended the Culver City memorial, according to NBC10 Philadelphia, which drew its account of the speeches from People magazine. Family, friends and people from the film industry made what the report called a series of moving speeches, and professional dancers performed, which was a fitting choice for a man who started as a dancer and never really stopped being one. NBC10 also reported that guests arriving at the service were greeted by a single white horse he had owned.

No guest list was published and no individual attendee was named in the contemporary reporting. The words spoken that day have not been published either. What was reported is simple enough: a room of several hundred people, speeches from those who knew him, and dancing.

The Impact on Fans and the Industry

Fans did get somewhere to go, just not to the service. Lake Lure in North Carolina, where many of the outdoor scenes in Dirty Dancing were filmed, held a free public memorial at Firefly Cove on the Saturday after he died, at seven in the evening. The Associated Press reported that the site was Camp Chimney Rock during filming and included the cabin used by Johnny Castle, the character Swayze played. Visitors were asked to donate to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network rather than pay to attend.

His death also did something for a disease that most people could not have described a week earlier. Pancreatic cancer has one of the worst survival rates in oncology, and Swayze talked about his treatment publicly at a time when very few actors would have. Lisa Niemi went on to campaign for pancreatic cancer research funding in the years that followed, and the fund set up in his name kept his illness attached to the work rather than to the tabloid coverage of his final months.

Legacy and Remembering Patrick Swayze

The Time of My Life, written with Lisa Niemi and published shortly after he died, remains the fullest account of his illness in his own words. The films have not gone anywhere either. Dirty Dancing and Ghost still play constantly, and the dance sequences still work on people who were not born when they were made. That is a rare kind of afterlife for an actor, and it is the one he has.

There is a practical lesson in how quiet his send-off was, and it is worth saying plainly. A private cremation with no announced arrangements protects a family from attention at the worst possible moment, but it only works smoothly when the decisions have been made in advance. Thinking through funeral planning ahead of time, or setting out your wishes through casket pre-planning, is what lets a family do what the Swayzes did instead of deciding everything in a single week. You can see the same pattern in the farewells of Kelly Preston and Alan Rickman, and in the private burial that preceded Elizabeth Taylor's much larger public memorial.

Conclusion

The funeral and casket details of Patrick Swayze come down to a short list. He died on 14 September 2009 at 57, his publicist announced it that evening, his death certificate recorded that he was cremated, and a private memorial for several hundred people was held at Sony Studios in Culver City in early October. There was no casket, no burial, and no public resting place, and that is unlikely to change now.

It is a small record for a very large career, and that was clearly the point. If you are looking at other farewells from the same era of Hollywood, our celebrity caskets and funerals collection has more of them, and our caskets range shows what families actually choose when they do hold a traditional service.

Sources

• ABC News / Good Morning America, "Actor Patrick Swayze Dies of Pancreatic Cancer", 14 September 2009
• CBS News with the Associated Press, "Actor Patrick Swayze Dies at 57", 14 September 2009
• NPR, "Actor, Dancer Patrick Swayze Dies At 57", 14 September 2009
• Fox News, "Patrick Swayze Dies of Pancreatic Cancer at 57", 15 September 2009
• CBS News with the Associated Press, "'Dirty Dancing' Town Plans Memorial", 17 September 2009
• TV Guide, "Patrick Swayze Has Been Cremated", 18 September 2009
• Irish Examiner, "Swayze cremated", 18 September 2009
• HELLO!, "Patrick Swayze to be remembered at a memorial service on Sunday", 30 September 2009
• TODAY, "Patrick Swayze memorial set for Sunday", September 2009
• NBC10 Philadelphia, "Hundreds Mourn Patrick Swayze at L.A. Funeral", 5 October 2009

Image credits

Patrick Swayze at the Governor's Ball following the 61st Academy Awards, March 1989. Photograph by Alan Light, published on Flickr at flickr.com/photos/alan-light/210247289 under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic licence (CC BY 2.0), creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0. The photograph has not been altered.