Tributes to Jackson spring up in unlikely locales

PITTSBURGH — Tilesha McClurkin wanted to join other Michael Jackson fans to celebrate his life, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to go to whatever official memorial celebration might be held.

So she and 125 other people packed a Pittsburgh funeral home Thursday to watch videos and dance performances and sing along to the King of Pop’s hits.

“Turn this sucker up,” someone in the audience yelled as Jackson’s “Rock with You” video was played. Another woman mimicked Jackson’s footwork in his “Billie Jean” video as the audience cheered her on.

“This is as close as I can get,” said the 34-year-old McClurkin, who wore a red denim jacket bedecked with zippers — just like the Jackson-esque red leather one she had in sixth grade. “How do you love someone so much you’ve never met? … Why did I feel so much when he died?”

Tequiera Miller’s love for Jackson may be even deeper: She wore a shirt bearing his image and sported a tattoo on her left arm depicting the “Off the Wall” album showing his shoes on tiptoe.

Miller, 22, begged her mother for months for the tattoo and got it when she turned 16 with $75 she earned working at an electronics store.

“I think he’s sexy. I was supposed to marry him,” she said. “I feel like I can connect with his music.”

Roland J. Criswell, president of Coston Funeral Homes, organized the event, saying he knew people had a strong connection to Jackson, even though Jackson, who died last week at age 50, never visited the neighborhood and hadn’t performed in Pittsburgh in ages.

Criswell said he was not a huge Jackson fan but respected his work on civil rights, his philanthropy and his social contributions.

Interest in the memorial was so great that he’s added a second service for July 10, which is expected to draw the same number of people.

Across the country, people and towns with no connection to Jackson are holding services in his honor, showing how completely the multifaceted entertainer permeated American culture. Among the other gatherings:

— In Kettering, Ohio, more than 500 people visited the Routsong Funeral Home to sign a book that will be sent to the Jackson family.

— In Dallas, hundreds of people packed the Golden Gate Funeral Home on Sunday for songs and celebration.

— In Richmond, Va., hundreds of people, including the mayor, attended a memorial at a park, singing and dancing along to “Rock with You” and other songs.

“We take these things very personally,” said Salvatore Didato, a retired associate professor at Seton Hall University from Ossining, N.Y.

Fans can feel a special connection to celebrities such as Jackson, and when they die, it’s not unlike losing a family member — even if they never met, said Dr. Bert Hayslip, a psychology professor at the University of North Texas. Their grief is real and profound, he said.

“When they die, a little bit of you dies, and that’s what grief is all about,” he said.

The memorials springing up around the country serve to legitimize fan grief, he said.

“It gives you the kinds of support that you might not otherwise get when you’re grieving someone in particular,” he said.

Rocky Twyman, a volunteer at a soup kitchen at the First Seventh-day Adventist Church in Washington, D.C., helped organize a Jackson tribute Wednesday for homeless people.

“The homeless don’t have the Internet and everything,” he said. “And they wanted to do something to show how much they cared about Michael Jackson.”

Many of the 50 people who turned out to sing spiritual songs signed a memorial book that Twyman hopes can be presented as part of whatever official memorial takes place.

“What I really wanted to bring out that seems to be lost is all the wonderful things that this man did for humanity,” Twyman said, referring to Jackson’s charitable work, such as his involvement in “Feed the World” to raise money for starving people in Africa.

“He was a very selfless person, really,” Twyman said. “He may have been confused, but to me, he really was a child of God.”Helen Fitzgerald, who has written several books on grief and works with the American Hospice Foundation in Washington, said Jackson, with his worldwide fame and life lived in popular culture, reminds many people of their own youth.

“It’s kind of like it’s an end of an era,” she said.

Fitzgerald, 70, also admits she wasn’t really a fan, but she was nonetheless intrigued by him, especially his dancing.

“I was just curious,” she said, “how a person could move his body that way.”