The Truth About Where J. Edgar Hoover Is Buried

April 2024 · 1 minute read

Neither man ever married, and when Hoover died — he was buried at Washington, D.C.'s Congressional Cemetery — he left most of his estate to Tolson. And when Tolson died in 1975, he was buried near Hoover in the same cemetery. Per The Washington Post, another famous grave in the Congressional Cemetery is about a ten-second walk from Hoover's. The grave (shown above) is that of Leonard Matlovich, a Vietnam War veteran who served in the Air Force for 12 years. 

In the mid-1970s, Matlovich met fellow veteran and gay rights activist Franklin Kameny, who had been dismissed from the Army Map Service in 1957 for being gay. Kameny wanted to challenge the legality of the armed forces banning openly gay people from serving. Per Matlovich's friend Michael Bedwell, Kameny was looking for "someone with a flawless record who the military doesn't already know is gay, and who is ready to fight as a test case." Matlovich fit the bill and came out publicly in 1975, even appearing on the cover of Time magazine. Five years of unsuccessful legal battles ensued, and openly gay people continued to be banned from the United States military until 2011.

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