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Look Back: Busch Sr. suicide, 1934

Date: 2/12/2010 Album ID: 942681

Photos by Post-Dispatch archives

In pain from heart disease and gout, August A. Busch Sr. took his life on Feb. 13, 1934. He had been president of Anheuser-Busch Inc. since 1913, managing the company�s survival through the anti-German bias of World War I and Prohibition. Thousands of mourners, from senators to brewers, lined up outside the mansion to view the bronze casket, blanketed with lilies of the valley. Busch had directed that he be buried in Sunset Burial Park, within sight of Grant�s Farm.

August A. Busch Sr. later in life. (Library of Congress)

August A. Busch Sr. at Grant's Farm in March 1929, with two grandchildren seated upon his prize ox. With grandpa are (left) James Busch Orthwein and Lilly Christy Busch. (Post-Dispatch)

Mourners stand outside the Busch mansion on Feb. 16, 1934, the day of his burial. The Rev. Hulbert A. Woolfall, of St. Peter's Episcopal Church (then in midtown St. Louis), led the funeral service in the living room, where Busch's casket had been placed. Thousands paid respects the day before. (Post-Dispatch)

The Rev. Woolfall leads pall bearers and mourners to the gravesite in Sunset Burial Park, on Gravois Road just eastward across the Gravois Creek valley from Grant's Farm. Busch decided against being buried in Bellefontaine Cemetery, where his parents, Adolphus and Lilly Busch, were interred in an elaborate Gothic mausoleum. He chose a plot at Sunset because he could see the mansion from that spot. (Post-Dispatch)

Mourners gather around the grave. St. Louis police were brought to the service to help the St. Louis County sheriff's deputies keep back the crowds. (Post-Dispatch)

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