Zora Neale Hurston died on January 28, 1960, and after friends from near and far raised over $600 in her memory, her funeral was held at the Peek Funeral Chapel on February 7, 1960. She was laid to rest in an unmarked grave in the then segregated Garden of Heavenly Rest Cemetery in Fort Pierce. In 1973, Alice Walker visited Eatonville, learned that Hurston was buried in Fort Pierce, and searched the then overgrown cemetery with the help of a funeral home employee named Rosalee. After finding a sunken rectangle near the center of the cemetery, Walker concluded that it was Hurston’s grave and ordered the headstone that now identifies the final resting place of the “Genius of the South.” Walker’s rediscovery helped begin Hurston’s rise from near obscurity to fame again; within a few years, Robert Hemenway’s biography was published and Hurston’s books began to reappear in the popular market. In the 1980s, members of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority placed the large slab on top of the gravesite, which has since become a popular place for visitors to leave offerings and messages in her honor.