People

By Guy D. Garcia

When word arrived that Calvin Coolidge was dead, she asked her fellow wits at the Algonquin Round Table, "How can they tell?" When Dorothy Parker died in 1967, nobody doubted that a void had been left in the ranks of major American humorists. Parker's friend and fellow writer Lillian Hellman arranged to have her ashes placed in a New York mortuary. But after Hellman's death three years ago, Parker's remains were moved to a safe in the Manhattan office of her executor, Attorney Paul O'Dwyer, who hoped that someone, possibly a distant relative, might step forward to collect them. O'Dwyer appealed to New York Daily News Columnist Liz Smith, who wrote about Parker's plight last week in her syndicated column. The result was a torrent of inquiries, including one from a wealthy Midwesterner who offered to inter Parker's remains on his country estate and another from an Arizona businessman who volunteered to create a special paint made from her ashes. O'Dwyer maintains that "we should dispose of her ashes in a fashion consistent with her stature in the arts." Meanwhile, he keeps the remains in a galvanized can wrapped in white paper. "It's a cheap thing," O'Dwyer admits. Parker's epitaph for herself seems more appropriate than ever: "Excuse my dust."

With reporting by David E. Thigpen/New York