Members of the Florida Highway Patrol carry the governor’s casket down
the steps of the Capital.
“When he died, it was absolutely devastating for this
town,” recalled Holman. After lying in state at the Capitol
in Tallahassee, McCarty’s body was brought to Fort Pierce
in a special 10-car Pullman funeral train carrying various
national and state dignitaries. News-Tribune accounts
said more than 1,000 people were waiting at the Fort
Pierce train depot when the casket arrived. One of those
was Ed Register.
“I walked over there with John, and they put the casket
in one of the hearses. John and I walked along the
hearse and talked to the driver all the way to the house
on Indian River Drive. They put Dan’s body in the parlor
downstairs. That was a case when they did go through
the front door.”
Register said the parlor viewing was for family members
only. Before the funeral, Register said he and John
McCarty checked out the church and the Palms Cemetery
on Indian River Drive to make sure everything was in
order. Though John McCarty already had someone clean
up the cemetery, Register said the governor’s brother
picked up a few palm fronds that had since fallen. “They
were very close,” Register said.
Gov. Dan McCarty was so popular that it’s said the last car
in his bumper-to-bumper funeral procession hadn’t yet left
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church when the first car arrived at
the family plot at Palms Cemetery seven miles away.
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Members of McCarty’s Cabinet carry his casket during his funeral in Fort
Pierce.
Dan McCarty, Florida’s thirty-first governor, is buried in the family plot in
Palms Cemetery, seven miles south of the house he grew up in on South
Indian River Drive in downtown.
POLITICAL HISTORY