30 Years Of Roses

I was just doing a bit of casual reading on Wikipedia tonight prior to hitting the sack, and I stumbled upon Joe DiMaggio’s entry. I knew he had been married to Marilyn Monroe at one point in his life, but never really knew how crazy he was about her. I’m an old school romantic, and I thought this was pretty cool:

According to biographer Maury Allen, Joe was so alarmed at how Marilyn had returned to her self-destructive ways, falling in with people he felt detrimental to her (including Frank Sinatra and his “Rat Pack”), he quit his job with a military post-exchange supplier on August 1, 1962 to ask her to remarry him. But before he could, she was found dead on August 5. Her death was deemed a probable suicide but is subject to endless conspiracy theories. Devastated, he claimed her body and arranged her funeral, barring Hollywood’s elite.

He had a half-dozen red roses delivered 3 times a week to her crypt for the next 30 years until his death.

His last words before he died were “I’ll finally get to see Marilyn.”