Robert Cletus "Bobby" Driscoll

 Robert Cletus "Bobby" Driscoll (March 3, 1937 – March 30, 1968)

Driscoll was a child actor and artist known for a large body of cinema and TV performances from 1943 to 1960. He starred in some of the Walt Disney Studios' most popular live-action pictures of that period, such as Song of the South (1946), So Dear to My Heart (1948), and Treasure Island (1950). He served as animation model and provided the voice for the title role in Peter Pan (1953). In 1950, he received an Academy Juvenile Award for outstanding performance in feature films of 1949, for his roles in So Dear to My Heart and The Window, both released in 1949. In the mid-1950s, Driscoll's acting career began to decline, and he turned primarily to guest appearances on anthology TV series. He became addicted to narcotics, and was sentenced to prison for illicit drug use. After his release he focused his attention on the avant-garde art scene. In ill health due to his substance abuse, and with his funds completely depleted, he died in 1968, less than four weeks after his 31st birthday. The medical examination determined that he had died from heart failure caused by an advanced hardening of the arteries because of his longtime drug abuse. There was no identification on the body, and photos taken of it and shown around the neighborhood yielded no positive identification. When Driscoll's body went unclaimed, he was buried in an unmarked pauper's grave in New York City's Potter's Field on Hart Island.

Late in 1969, about nineteen months after his death, Driscoll's mother sought the help of officials at the Disney studios to contact him for a hoped-for reunion with his father, who was nearing death. This resulted in a fingerprint match at NYPD, which located his burial on Hart Island. Although his name appears on his father's gravestone at Eternal Hills Memorial Park in Oceanside, California, it is a cenotaph.