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Funeral Procession Hits Burger King Drive-Thru For Dead Man's Last Whopper
By
John Del Signore
Published Jan 28, 2013
Modified Jan 28, 2013
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By
John Del Signore
Published Jan 28, 2013
Modified Jan 28, 2013
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Some of us want our ashes to be blown out of a Folgers can onto our friends' faces on an inopportune gust of wind, others simply ask that their remains to be fired out of a giant cannon. The family of Pennsylvania resident David Kime Jr., who died at 88, say they knew exactly what he wanted: one last order of Burger King for the road. And so his funeral procession swung by the drive-thru en route to his final resting place.
"It's nice to know he was a loyal customer up until the end—the very end," Burger King manager Margaret Hess tells the York Daily Record. "He liked his WHOPPER JRs." On Saturday her employees prepared 40 of the sandwiches for the funeral procession, including one that was lovingly lowered down into Kime's grave at Prospect Hill Cemetery in York, Pennsylvania.
Kime, a World War II veteran who was borderline diabetic and had a pacemaker, "lived a wonderful life and on his own terms," his daughter tells the Associated Press. He ate at several fast food restaurants every week. "He would take his Cadillac, which he loved, and drive up to Hanover and have a gut-buster," his daughter recalls, adding that her attempts to get her father to improve his diet fell on deaf ears. "He would say, 'I won't live longer, it will just seem like it because I'll be more miserable faster.' "
Kime died of heart complications on January 20th. (Be sure to check back tomorrow for our followup post about how this was all an ingenious viral marketing stunt.)
Tagged
burger king
fast food
fast food nation
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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