After she died at the age of 83, New Orleans philanthropist and socialite Mickey Easterling attended her own memorial service with a glass of champagne and a cigarette in her hands, a festive hat on her head and wrapped in a feather boa.
The service, which was attended by more than 1,000 people, put Easterling at the center of attention, even in death.
“She`s in a Leonardo outfit,” Easterling’s hair and makeup artist, Sammy Steele, told WGNO. “And I actually dressed her tonight for the occasion. She touched so many different people. She made such a contribution in our city, to arts and the community.”
Easterling was even wearing a “#1 Bitch” pin to mark the occasion.
“It’s like something out a department store window in New York. On 5th Ave.,” Steele said. “This is what she requested. She`s sitting in a garden scenery to depict her back yard. This is what she wanted. No stone was left unturned for this memorial.”
“She loved the limelight. She loved the attention,” her daughter, Nanci Myke Easterling, told the New Orleans Times-Picayune. “She was flamboyant. She had flair. She was outrageous.”
