The US president had promised the band that if they ever needed his help, he would be on hand. So when Dennis Wilson died, he started making some calls
Minutes after sunset on 4 January 1984, the body of Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson entered the Pacific Ocean from the deck of a US Coast Guard ship.
For civilians, burials at sea happen only with approval from a vice admiral or higher authority. That authority, in Wilson’s case, was also one of the biggest Beach Boys fans in America: the former California governor and then US president Ronald Reagan. His intervention appears to be the only time a president ever waded into funereal matters, and now, for the first time, unpublished records obtained from the Reagan Library, the National Archives and the Coast Guard provide a glimpse into the president’s unprecedented overture.
Continue reading...from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2JVaq2r
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