ROANE COUNTY, Tenn. — Felix “Bush” Breazeale was a farmer from Roane County, Tennessee.
At the age of 74, Breazeale came up with an idea. He wanted to have his funeral—before he died.
“Supposedly, he wanted to see what people were going to say about him,” Steven Robinson, grandson of Breazeale's funeral director, said.
Breazeale took his idea to the Quinn Funeral Home in Loudon.
“Bush looked up at him and said, ‘Well, Mr. Quinn, you don’t quite understand me. I’d like to have this before I die.’ It took granddaddy a second or two to get over that statement, but once he did, he said, ‘If that’s what you want to do Bush, then we’ll do our best to have a good funeral for you,'" Robinson said.
Before long, news of the man who wanted to have a living funeral hit the news wires, and for a brief moment in time, all eyes were on Roane County.
On June 26, 1938, 8,000 people from across four different states came to view what The Knoxville Journal described as a "live corpse."
“I remember the crowd was so big, a country boy wasn’t used to all that crowd,” funeral attendee J.Y. McNabb said.
Arriving in a hearse, Breazeale took a seat before his home-made casket and listened to what he called "the finest funeral I ever heard preached."
“After the funeral, Uncle Bush became a local celebrity," Robinson said. "He appeared at store openings, fairs, and other things around. He also was invited to New York by Robert Ripley to be on Ripley’s Believe it or Not show."
Felix “Bush” Breazeale died for real on Feb. 9, 1943.
The turnout for this funeral was far less than the one five years prior.
“My grandfather, again, for the second time, had Bush Breazeale’s funeral," Robinson said. "It was not a church service. This time, he requested that it be a graveside service, and there were six people that showed up for the funeral."
