Because of the new film "The Great Gatsby" starring Leonardo Antonio, writer F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Fitzgerald's grave in suburban Maryland have seen an influx of visitors.
"We usually see a handful of people visiting the cemetery in a given week," Rev. Monsignor Robert Amey of St. Mary's Catholic Church, where the couple is buried, said to The Washington Post. "That number has tripled in the last week."
The Washington Post reported that many visitors leave offerings including flowers, spare change and liquor while some aspiring authors leave pens and some leave handwritten notes.
"Once you're actually in the small cemetery, the tombstone of Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda - almost as much an emblem of the age as her husband - is easy to pick out," reported The Independent. "A bouquet of fresh flowers might be expected. Less so, however, other votive offerings left by admirers - an unopened miniature bottle of Seagram's whiskey and small piles of coins, symbols of the two commodities of which Fitzgerald was in constant need before he died in 1940: money and drink."
Montgomery County Historical Society archives stated that F. Scott Fitzgerald died in Hollywood, California in his lover, Sheilah Graham's apartment. He died in 1940 and because of the adulterous life he led the Catholic Church would not let his body be buried on consecrated ground in the family plot at Saint Mary's. He wanted to be buried with his parents but was buried in a Protestant cemetery called Rockville Union Cemetery which was located about two miles from Saint Mary's. His wife Zelda was later placed in the same grave on top of his casket.
35 years after first rejecting F. Scott Fitzgerald's burial, St. Mary's accepted both Fitzgeralds. F. Scott Fitzgerald lived in a house in Baltimore and it recently wento n the market for $450,000. The house sold after a few months for $464,000, reported The Huffington Post.
To visit the famous couple's grave they are located in Rockville, Maryland at St. Mary's Catholic Churc at 520 Veirs Mill Rd., Rockville, Md.
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