Alistair Cooke, the broadcaster and journalist whose show ”Letters from America” was played regularly on the SABC’s SAFM, wanted his ashes scattered over Central Park, New York, and asked that no funeral service should be held for him, it emerged on Friday.
”I should like my friends to stay home or join a neighbour, enjoy a drink and think pleasant thoughts of me,” he said in his will, filed in a Manhattan court 11 days before he died last month at the age of 95.
All Cooke’s BBC radio ”Letters from America” stretching over 58 years, and much of his print journalism, were written in his rent-controlled 15th floor apartment overlooking Central Park.
In one of his letters, which were the longest-running programme on radio, he remarked how the park seemed to sparkle as he looked at it the day after the world-imperilling Cuban missile crisis was solved in 1962.
The park was so much part of Cooke’s legend that an MP3 audio file circulating on the internet claims to be his only live broadcast from it.
”Good morning … Get off me” his voice says as he is attacked by a duck. The recording is affectionately bogus.
The 11-page will put Cooke’s estate at between R14,3-million and R22,1-million, according to the New York Daily News.
Most was left to his widow, Jane, while his grandchildren received about R7 000 each.
Cooke left about R20 000 and an 18th-century figurine of a Chinese banker, purchased from the estate of the newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, to his long-time secretary, Patricia Yasek.
Cooke’s lawyer, David Grossberg, was unable to say whether the ashes had yet been scattered.
”He didn’t want to make a fuss. He was a very simple person.”
Cooke’s view of his legacy to his audience was given in the signing-off message in his last broadcast: ”I have had much enjoyment in doing these talks and hope that some of it has passed over to the listeners, to all of whom I now say, thank you for your loyalty and goodbye.” – Guardian Unlimited Â