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Aretha's last ride: The vintage hearse that carried Rosa Parks will now bear the Queen of Soul [View all]
Morning Mix
Aretha’s last ride: The vintage hearse that carried Rosa Parks will now bear the Queen of Soul
The 1940 Cadillac LaSalle that will carry Aretha Franklin home, seen Wednesday outside the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit. (Tannen Maury/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
By Meagan Flynn
August 30 at 7:03 AM
When Aretha Franklin is laid to rest Friday, she’ll travel as she did all her life: with grace and glamour.
The hearse that will carry her is a regal, pearly-white 1940 LaSalle, made by Cadillac, with sparkling chrome detail that looked as though it had been custom-made for the Queen of Soul herself. For the last 50 years, it’s been reserved at Swanson Funeral Home for some of the Motor City’s most stately send-offs.
The ivory hearse carried Rosa Parks in 2005, when the pallbearers pushed the antique vehicle with all their might on the final stretch toward the civil rights hero’s grave at Detroit’s Woodlawn Cemetery. It transported the Temptations baritone David Ruffin in 1991 and Levi Stubbs of the Four Tops in 2008. And it ushered Franklin’s father, the Rev. C.L. Franklin, in 1984.
Through it all, O’Neil D. Swanson II has been the man behind the scenes at every occasion. Swanson, the octogenarian funeral director at Swanson Funeral Home, has owned the business since 1958, and has been close to the Franklin family for years, he told The Washington Post.
....
The LaSalle leaves the Charles H. Wright Museum of African-American History on Aug. 28 (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
....
Meagan Flynn is a reporter on The Washington Post's Morning Mix team. She was previously a reporter at the Houston Chronicle and the Houston Press. Follow https://twitter.com/Meagan_Flynn
Aretha’s last ride: The vintage hearse that carried Rosa Parks will now bear the Queen of Soul
The 1940 Cadillac LaSalle that will carry Aretha Franklin home, seen Wednesday outside the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit. (Tannen Maury/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
By Meagan Flynn
August 30 at 7:03 AM
When Aretha Franklin is laid to rest Friday, she’ll travel as she did all her life: with grace and glamour.
The hearse that will carry her is a regal, pearly-white 1940 LaSalle, made by Cadillac, with sparkling chrome detail that looked as though it had been custom-made for the Queen of Soul herself. For the last 50 years, it’s been reserved at Swanson Funeral Home for some of the Motor City’s most stately send-offs.
The ivory hearse carried Rosa Parks in 2005, when the pallbearers pushed the antique vehicle with all their might on the final stretch toward the civil rights hero’s grave at Detroit’s Woodlawn Cemetery. It transported the Temptations baritone David Ruffin in 1991 and Levi Stubbs of the Four Tops in 2008. And it ushered Franklin’s father, the Rev. C.L. Franklin, in 1984.
Through it all, O’Neil D. Swanson II has been the man behind the scenes at every occasion. Swanson, the octogenarian funeral director at Swanson Funeral Home, has owned the business since 1958, and has been close to the Franklin family for years, he told The Washington Post.
....
The LaSalle leaves the Charles H. Wright Museum of African-American History on Aug. 28 (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
....
Meagan Flynn is a reporter on The Washington Post's Morning Mix team. She was previously a reporter at the Houston Chronicle and the Houston Press. Follow https://twitter.com/Meagan_Flynn
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