Dancers from TII as funeral guys

wandulkawandulka Posts: 53
edited January 1970 in General Hoax Investigation
First of all, I was very invested in the hoax a few years back, but then I stopped and now I'm at it once again, so I am a little behind everything. If this has been discussed before, I apologize.<br /><br />Ok, I was watching the funeral (not the memorial) and I noticed that one (or more?) dancers from This Is It were among the funeral guys (I don't know what they're called, they tell people where to sit & wear the same clothes). Is this old news? If yes, can somebody explain? Was it on purpose?  :WTF:

Comments

  • I think they are called funeral ushers. I thought they were Pallbearers at first, but Pallbearers are the people that actually carry the casket.  I remember reading about this, too.  I think Forest Lawn only provides services related to the actual burial and care of the the deceased's body and caskets, although people can purchase caskets elsewhere.  It's usually the family members that plan out the ceremony and funeral homes would provide the facilities or space to hold the services.  <br /><br />If it was the family that planned the ceremony, it wouldn't make sense to use their own relatives and friends as ushers since they're all attending the funeral.  So, I can see why they would have the TII dancers as ushers.  They already had a working relationship with MJ and would show more professionalism and discretion rather than hiring random people to fill that role.  <br /><br />Or....it's all just a part of the show! haha.<br /><br />
  • Thank you. Yes, that makes sense. I googled it and it says exactly that. Not such a mystery afterall....I guess. :D
  • come to think of it , i have been to many a funeral in my day ( :() and i don't ever recall there being ushers.
  • EchoEcho Posts: 111
    In America funeral ushers are common. It is a traditional formality; social etiquette 101.  The funeral home provides personnel, however the family chooses the men and women that serve as ushers. The responsibility of a funeral usher is to greet attendees, hand out programs and assist with seating. In addition, the role of an usher is to tend to a mourner who is subject to become highly emotional during the service.
  • RKRK Posts: 3,019
    The weirdest thing about the TII dancers being ushers is this pic of them posing around a pic of Michael and smiling.<br /><br />dancerushers.jpg<br />If I believed it was a real funeral, I would call this tactless and in bad taste, to be smiling like that under the circumstances, but as I don't believe this funeral was the real thing, this is just another episode from those  early hoax  days that belongs  on the 'weird list".
  • DoDo Posts: 850
    imagegyg.jpg<br /><br />This picture was taken on the day of the funeral of their husband and dad. The woman is a Dutch actress, married to a Dutch actor and singer. He committed suicide after being manic depressive for years. His wife found him dead at home. Despite the difficulties caused by his illness, they were a happily married couple. I don't feel they are disrespectful and tactless for smiling at his funeral, because I'm sure that, despite their sadness and despair, they were also celebrating his life and their happy years together. Also, when kids are involved, I feel it's important to give them a little comfort by smiling and make them feel life's not over and that things are going to be okay. <br />There is too much emphasis on the crying/not crying/smiling part when someone dies, that is definitely not an indication if someone is mourning or not.
  • yeah i think at some point a bit of laughter will sneak into the situation almost as some sort of relief mechanism .
  • That right there is why I always had my doubts as to people citing 'hoax!!!' from how people at MJ's memorial and funeral services seemed "happy, almost giddy."<br /><br /><br />Perhaps we caught people there exchanging funny stories/memories about MJ, and we thought they were not grieving at all.<br /><br />So does that debunk anything on how we viewed the reactions of people at MJ's funeral services?
  • i feel like those moments of the sillies usually come in the wee hours when it is just family sitting around talking about old times ect. <br />what i think stood out to me is that the times of ummm emotional breakdown on the part of family did not feel authenticate. only one who seemed truly sad was kate and i swear it was a sadness that something was up and not one of the devastation of the loss of your child. is all just my opinion though of course. :-\
  • Yes, in America there are ushers who will assist people to their seats and do other tasks during the funeral.<br /><br />One thing that hasn't been discussed here (but probably discussed on another thread) is that back in the day, there would be ushers at the movie theatre who would bring you to your seat. I always wondered if the dancers were to represent these ushers, not ushers at funerals.<br /><br />Also, in the Motown Special Marlon is wearing the same jacket. When I saw the dancers I knew that jacket looked familiar:<br /><br />uniform1.jpg<br />dancers.jpg<br /><br />Since the Motown Special was a show, were we being told the funeral was also a show? Which reminds me of Liberian Girl, with Michael behind the camera.<br /><br />Love you Michael!
  • wonder if there could be any reason why it was made after marlon's jacket? i have also considered that his initials are also mj
  • on 1418917988:
    <br />wonder if there could be any reason why it was made after marlon's jacket? i have also considered that his initials are also mj<br />
    <br /><br />You got me to thinking with that question. What if it wasn't modeled after Marlons jacket? What if it was modeled just for the jacket itself?<br /><br />A couple of years ago I read about a military jacket that had been found during Hurricane Sandy and when I saw the pic my jaw dropped to the floor.<br /><br />militaryjacketinstory_zpsad049164.jpg<br /><br />Here is the article:<br /><br />http://news.yahoo.com/lost-military-jacket-found-post-sandy-nj-beach-103848150.html<br /><br />Lost military jacket found on post-Sandy NJ beach<br />By MICHAEL FELBERBAUM <br /><br />November 30, 2012 3:11 PM<br /><br />By By MICHAEL FELBERBAUM | Associated Press <br /><br />RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Donna Gugger's heart was heavy as she sifted through the scattered debris and devastation left by Superstorm Sandy along the Jersey Shore. Pieces of broken furniture. Shards of metal. Chairs ripped off patios. Blue jeans tossed out of bureaus.<br /><br />But there was something different about that swath of gray cloth with shiny brass buttons. She stopped to take a second look, leaning down to tug on an edge of the fabric that peeked out from under the sand. At first glance, she thought it was an elaborate Halloween costume — a jacket that reminded her of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper.<br /><br />It was no costume. Gugger had stumbled across an 80-year-old tunic owned by a 1933 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, a World War II hero described in his West Point yearbook as a soldier with a "heart like a stormy sea."<br /><br />The jacket's journey is as mysterious as its history. No one knows how it ended up on the Jersey Shore, hundreds of miles north of the late warrior Chester B. deGavre's home on Virginia's Eastern Shore. His 98-year-old widow, Tita deGavre, didn't even know it existed.<br />But now that it has been found, the jacket is more than just a recovered forgotten relic.<br /><br />For deGavre, it is another part of her late husband to cherish. She plans to hang it on the wall along with some of his other military garb and awards at the Deep Creek Plantation, a sprawling Virginia landscape along the shore where she also found her husband's missing West Point ring years ago.<br /><br />"I found it most impossible to believe," deGavre said after Gugger drove five hours earlier this week to deliver the ornate jacket. "Where could it have been all this time?"<br /><br />Chester deGavre's parents used to live in Red Bank, less than 10 miles southwest of where the jacket was found. But that was years ago and the house has been sold many times over.<br /><br />"Somebody must have had (the jacket) under great care, and whether their house blew away with Sandy, I don't know," said deGavre, who met her husband while he was overseas in her native England. They married in 1948.<br /><br />"It's all a big mystery, but I'm happy about it."<br /><br />To Gugger, the jacket is nothing less than a symbol of resurrection and renewal in a landscape scarred by sorrow and loss.<br />The 48-year-old pharmaceutical consultant from Holland, Pa., found the military clothing while she and other members of the Sandy Hook Bay Catamaran Club helped clean up damage from Sandy, which struck in late October.<br /><br />"I saw blue jeans, I had seen jackets, chairs, backpacks — all kinds of things," she said. "And to go from a point of looking at devastation and the sadness that was associated with that, to find that something so good could potentially come out of the findings in all of that debris, I was just overjoyed."<br /><br />Gugger took the jacket home, shook out the sand, and washed it off. It was in extraordinary condition, and upon closer examination, she noticed the words "West Point" and "issued to deGavre" on the inside. Determined to get the jacket back to its rightful owner, she contacted West Point's Association of Graduates, which cleaned and preserved it and tracked down deGavre's family.<br /><br />The heavy coat, studded with brass buttons down the front and sleeves, hasn't changed much since it was first adopted at the academy around 1816, said retired Army Col. Chris Needels, a 1965 graduate of West Point and family friend of the deGavres. With its tails, intricate stitching, and diagonal gold braids on the shoulders, the jacket is still worn by cadets for formal occasions and in parades.<br /><br />Before his death in 1993 at age 85, Chester deGavre was a Retired Army brigadier general, a pioneering paratrooper and chief of staff for the 1944 airborne invasion of southern France. He was one of the first Army officers to take parachute training at the start of World War II, joining the Airborne Command at Fort Bragg, N.C. The Newark, N.J., native improved techniques and standardized equipment for the airborne forces as a parachute-training officer and chief of test and development. His decorations included a Silver Star from the Korean War and the Legion of Merit with three oak-leaf clusters.<br /><br />"This was a soldier, this was a war hero, somebody who risked his life for our country, and I was determined to get it back to the family," Gugger said of the jacket.<br /><br />"It's a miracle because it's still a mystery how it made it to that beach and for me to have even had the opportunity to pick it up. It's not really about the jacket, it's about the journey."<br /><br />http://www.usma.edu/news/SitePages/West Point Cadet Uniforms.aspx&lt;br /><br />The full dress coat was adopted in 1816 and has remained almost the same throughout the years. It is of swallow-tailed style and many of the small details of 1816 still exist today: black silk core on the breast, cuffs and coat-tails in herringbone form and three rows of gilt bullet buttons. This coat is made by hand in the Cadet Store Tailor Shop by highly skilled master craftsmen in much the same manner as their predecessors did a century and a half ago.<br /><br />1+8+1+6 = 16 = 1 + 6 = 7<br /><br /><br />It is a WestPoint Military jacket. Are we aware of anyone that is part of this hoax that went to WestPoint?<br /><br />Love you Michael!<br />
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