Archived Site: Mary Pearl Willis Foundation

Information Concerning this Archived Site

Source: http://www.mpwfoundation.org/ (Inactive)

This is the archive of the website for the Mary Pearl Willis Foundation, named after a member of Peoples Temple who died in Jonestown in 1978. Lela Howard, the niece of Ms. Willis, established the site in 2007 initially to pay tribute to her aunt and to document the efforts to identify the location of Ms. Willis' unmarked grave in a Louisiana graveyard. After a successful campaign to rebury her aunt, Ms. Howard then transformed the foundation into a source of financial assistance to low income families so that "unmarked graves are no longer an option." The foundation became inactive in 2009.

In the interest of preserving the information from the Mary Pearl Willis Foundation site for future generations of Jonestown scholars and researchers, the managers of this site obtained permission from Ms. Howard to archive this work in its entirety.

The Mary Pearl Willis Foundation

5650 Windsor Way
Suite 307
Culver City, CA 90230
ph: (310) 216-0160

Awards and Recognition 6

Before the excavation, Howard had described the casket as a light blue-type color with a steel strip on the side. McFarland confirmed that the color was nearly similar and that a steel strip had been welded around the casket to seal it.

Howard, with the help of her son Chris Demirdjian, knelt down and briefly touched her aunt’s casket. Trembling, she then reach down from the dirt unearthed from atop the casket and picked up a small plastic flower with pink petals that lay on the ground.

After the dirt was placed back over Willis’ grave, Howard placed the small flower atop the grave.

“I have her headstone ordered and I’ll be back next month to place it on her grave,” Howard said. “Nobody’s going to walk around her grave again without knowing who’s there.”

5650 Windsor Way
Suite 307
Culver City , CA 90230
ph: (310) 216-0160