Jazz Graveside Service

Honoring Bunny Berigan

In the Sunday morning of May 20, 2012, the last day of the Bunny Berigan Jazz Jubilee, there will be a graveside service for Bunny Berigan and his daughter Joyce. The time will be 11:00 AM in the St. Mary’s Cemetery on Breezy Point Road, two miles south of Fox Lake on Highway 33.

Jazz musicians, Bob Schulz and others, plus the songstress, Ginny O’Brien and the Rev. Al Townsend will be present to make it a beautiful service. The Rev. Al Townsend, leader of the past Bunny Berigan Memorial Band, will deliver the message. Rev. Townsend is from LaCrosse and can be credited with saving the Bunny Berigan Jazz Jubilee from extinction some years ago.

Bob Schulz, leader of the new Bunny Berigan JUBILEE Band, will be there to lead a new group of musicians honoring Bunny Berigan. Bob resides in California and has participated in this graveside service for years. In the past Wisconsin has handed all kinds of weather……. sunshine, wind, rain, and unseasonably cold weather, for this graveside service.

Ginny O’Brien from Madison will be there to add incredible beauty to the service. Ginny used to write about Bunny when she was the school newspaper reporter in High School and she was best friends with Joyce Berigan-Hansen, visiting Joyce during her last years in a nursing home. Joyce passed away in 2011 and her ashes are near her father.

The public is invited to this very special service and encouraged to arrive a few minutes early.