Man is buried in '72 Pontiac

By Preston Sparks | South Carolina Bureau Chief

Lonnie Holloway apparently didn't subscribe to the notion that you can't take it with you.

On Tuesday, the 90-year-old Saluda, S.C., man was buried in his favorite car -- a classic green 1972 Pontiac Catalina.

"It was unusual," his caretaker, Rosa Anderson, said in a telephone interview after the funeral, but "it was what he wanted."

"That was his favorite car, and he decided he wanted to be buried in it."

She said Mr. Holloway was placed in the vehicle, buckled into the driver's seat with his hand placed on the steering wheel.

Family and friends who gathered at Rock Hill Baptist Church were snapping photos as the car was lowered into an extra large plot, she said.

Mr. Holloway, who worked for the U.S. Department of Commerce for 32 years, died Sept. 2 of prostate cancer.

The car, which friends said Mr. Holloway had bought new, was not the only thing accompanying Mr. Holloway into posterity. Several rifles and six handguns were also buried with him, said Ms. Anderson, who called Tuesday's burial unique.
"No one had ever seen that before," she said.