Whistling Through the Graveyard
Chapter 7 - The Ubiquitous Miss Brown (and family)
Chapter 8 - The Unmasking of Factory Reject
In the Garden of Ascension section of Forest Lawn Glendale, there is a marker that simply reads "Factory Reject" with no dates. A. J. Marik saw this marker and created a Find A Grave memorial for it back in 2001, having no idea who if anyone was buried underneath the marker.
Since then thousands if not tens of thousands of people have looked at that memorial. Gravers that frequent Forest Lawn have occasionally stumbled across the marker or looked for it on purpose. There was one question on everyone's mind, or it should have been -- was there actually someone buried there, if so who were they, and why did they choose such an odd marker?
I can't answer the last question, although since questions one and two have been answered, I think we can assume question three can be answered "because of a very dry, odd sense of humor".
I don't remember why the subject first came up, but in 2013 I was having a lot of email contact with an acquaintance who was spending a lot of time at Forest Lawn, as was I. And somehow the topic of "Factory Reject" came up. My acquaintance said something to the effect of "Yeah, I've seen it. I could probably find it again."
That's where the matter was left for at least a few months. At some point "John" (I'm using an alias here because I probably don't have permission to use his real name, which is another subject I'm not getting into right now and hopefully never getting into) and I found out we could be at the cemetery together on the same day, so we arranged to meet up and see if he could lead me to "Factory Reject".
I know what date this was because of the time stamps on my digital photos. I've reconstructed the rest of the story from emails I wrote at the time, which is good because my memory was not clear on a couple of points.
My wife Michelle and I went to Forest Lawn on Saturday, 18 January 2014. We took a lot of other pictures, I was still doing photo requests for find a grave back then as well as a lot of miscellaneous other marker pictures, so I would sometimes take several hundred marker photos on a trip to Forest Lawn.
"John" met up with us and we found "Factory Reject" in the Garden of Ascension. I don't honestly remember how long it took, but I doubt if it took more than 20 or 30 minutes of searching, if that much. It helped that the marker was close to the curb so it was easily visible from one of the roads that run back and forth through the cemetery.
In addition to "Factory Reject's" marker, I took some area shots and I took photos of all the nearby markers, knowing that the names on the markers and their proximity and position to "Factory Reject" would be the key to finding out who he or she was, if in fact there had been a listing for him under his or her real name on the Forest Lawn website.
That wasn't the end of the day, as I recall. Knowing me I took at least a couple of hundred more photos, because that's what I do.
Once Michelle and I got home again that afternoon or evening, the real work started. I don't remember if I went right to "Factory Reject" or I worked on some of the other photos first.
I have already mentioned in this series of articles that I scraped the online Forest Lawn website in 2011 and 2012. It took quite a bit of my time over four months to do that, but since then it has been the gift that keeps on giving. Once I had that information I could search for anyone in Forest Lawn the same way the employees of Forest Lawn can search for someone, by plot location. (This is of course assuming that a person was listed in the online database, which has not always been the case, but is most of the time)
The markers in those lots in GoA are upside down from the curb, so you have to step in and away from the curb then turn around in order to read them with the correct orientation. Doing so, the marker to the right (west) of Factory Reject is for Haruko Taira, who died in 1988. Forest Lawn's website shows Haruko as being in GoA Lot 9321 Space 3. The website shows Haruko's husband Tom as being in Lot 9321 Space 4. The markers are most likely switched because Haruko's marker is in Space 4 and Tom's marker is in Space 3. (It's possible this was fixed later but this was the case as of January 2014).
2022-03-12 - A quick note, I was in Garden of Ascension again last weekend and stumbled across the Factory Reject marker again. I was wrong, the marker is not upside down from the walkway (and it is a walkway, not a curb, the road is at least 30 feet away if not more), and now I don't know why I thought that it was, I'm guessing because the Forest Lawn maps are oriented top to bottom from east to west and the markers on that side of the walkway are oriented the reverse of the map. Haruko Tairo's marker is still to the right, so it is still in Space 4, although the Forest Lawn website still shows Haruko in Space 3 and Tom in Space 4. Anyway, I thought I would set the record straight on that point. (End of correction)
The fact that those two markers were switched threw me at first, but I've seen that other times. I have actually let Forest Lawn know about a few of these where they had put a marker on a space for someone who was unrelated to the person the marker belonged to. Every time I've reported a mixup to them and gone back months later to check it I've found they have fixed the markers.
As an aside, I'm not sure why this happens. I'm not trying to air Forest Lawn's dirty laundry. My suspicion is that occasionally markers are damaged and taken off to be fixed or replaced. If the grounds people are not real clear on where the markers are supposed to go when they come back, they could easily put the markers back in the wrong space. Like I said, I have seen this happen several times. Of course I have looked at literally tens of thousands of markers.
The marker to the left (east) of Factory Reject is for Shew Kee Jew (I'm not making up the name, unlike Factory Reject!) who died in 2007. According to Forest Lawn that person is in GoA Lot 9332, Space 2.
As of 2014 there was no one else nearby in this row, so those were the markers I had to work with. There were people in other rows nearby so I took pictures of their markers as well, figuring you can never have too many data points or too many marker photos.
According to the section maps that Forest Lawn has put online, this is the layout of GoA facing towards the walkway from left to right: Lot 9321 Spaces 1, 2, 3, 4 and then Lot 9332 Spaces 1, 2, 3, 4.
Based on that information, "Factory Reject" had to be in Lot 9332, Space 1 (because that was the space between 9321-4 and 9332-2).
Using the database, I looked up the occupant of that space. His name was Edward Bixby Hutchinson. He was born in 1911 in Massachusetts and died in 1995 in Los Angeles County. I had created an FAG memorial for him after I scraped the Forest Lawn website, so he had one under his own name and another one under the "Factory Reject" name.
I also double checked that there was no marker photo for Edward with his real name on it, which would have blown my whole thesis. There wasn't one, because I was right, no marker existed under his real name.
I sent out an email on Monday the 20th to the group of gravers on the Glendale mailing list that I was doing at the time. It read as follows:
"Hi All,"
"I just thought I'd share this with the rest of you. There is a marker in the Garden of Ascension in Forest Lawn Glendale that simply says 'Factory Reject'. I had wondered if there was a person there and if so who it actually was. A memorial was created back in 2001 but before now I don't think the tools existed to figure out who it actually was."
"Well, the mystery if now officially solved. Factory Reject, meet Edward Bixby Hutchinson."
"It may not be as significant as finding out Superman was Clark Kent, but it's the best thing I could come up with today. Have a chuckle over it."
Link to Find A Grave Memorial 85431430
"Chris"
I'm going to publish a couple of the responses I got. From C. Bryan:
"That's nuts!! Good work, Chris, and thanks for the merriment. I find he, Ed, is actually there. But what could be the motive behind the motto? I guess there isn't a ruling we need to put anything near a correct name on the marker, what with the many nicknames and initials we find. Has to be some kind of an inside joke, the secret buried with him. Thanks"
Lisa Burks weighted in as well:
"Chris, I LOVE that you figured out who this person's name was. I have wondered the same thing about if anyone was buried there or not. Thank you so much! :)"
Lisa subsequently spent $5 to sponsor the memorial for Edward Hutchinson. She also emailed me back that he was born in Lynn, Essex County, Massachusetts, and that he was an accountant and an auditor.
Lisa and I had some further interactions that week and she was planning to go to Forest Lawn on the 1st of February. I met her and Jayne Osborne and several other people and we just roamed around looking at markers and going into the Great Mausoleum. It was a fun visit. Factory Reject was one of the attractions, this was probably the first time that anyone who didn't work for Forest Lawn saw his marker and actually knew who was buried there.
A few months after "FR" was unmasked (May 2014 to be exact) a virtual flower was left on Edward Hutchinson's memorial from a Peter Hutchinson, who said that he was Edward's nephew. Edward did in fact have a nephew named Peter, so this is at least plausible. Peter's only activity on Find A Grave was to leave a virtual flower on Edward's memorial.
This is what Peter said in his virtual flower:
"My uncle Edward B. Hutchinson was a champion skier into his 80s. He served in the US Army in Japan under Gen. MacArthur during the occupation and later became a government auditor of credit unions. Never married, his choice of grave marker was a personal decision."
I did a bit more research on Edward's family. His father was named Fred and his mother was Hedvig Nelson (or Nielson) Hutchinson. He had two brothers, Earl and Leslie. His parents and brothers have all passed away, I will be adding them to my database (completely independent of Find A Grave) and link them all together in the next week or so.
I hope Mr. Hutchinson is not offended that I discovered his true identity. He might have gotten a kick out of the fact that his little jest ended up generating so much attention. I don't think Find A Grave was even online yet in 1995 when he passed away, so it might have been completely unimaginable to him that so many people would end up seeing the marker that he had arranged to be placed on his grave.
What I think would be really fun (albeit confusing) would be if someone put up a cenotaph marker somewhere else for Edward Hutchinson. If it was clearly marked as a cenotaph it would be at least less confusing. Of course, based on his odd sense of humor, Edward might find that amusing too, if he were still around to appreciate it.
I have done something unusual in my online database in the entry for Edward. There is a separate listing for him under Factory Reject. In most cases I would merge the two entries together and just note Factory Reject as an alias for Edward Hutchinson. But this one has kind of taken on a life of its own. I have added an odd relationship between the two of them (so far not used for any other records) that says Factory Reject is an "alias" of Edward Hutchinson, and that Edward Hutchinson is the "real name of" Factory Reject. Who knows, I might have to do this for someone else one day.
I think this will put to bed the story of Factory Reject. I have been meaning to write this up since I started collecting some of my odd genealogy stories and publishing them online. If I ever find anything else noteworthy to add to this, I will go ahead and append it to this page.
Page created 14 June 2020
Sources:
Edward Bixby Hutchinson on Genealogy Locator System
Factory Reject on Genealogy Locator System
Edward Bixby Hutchinson on Find A Grave Dot Com
Factory Reject on Find A Grave Dot Com
Edward Bixby Hutchinson on Family Search Dot Org
Chapter 9
Chapter 9 - Death Outside A Cemetery
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