After almost a year of handling the estate of Thelma "Butterfly" McQueen, Justine and Ike Washington believe no one will ever fully know what the celebrated actress owned, what she intended to do with her movie memorabilia or where it is now.
McQueen, who played the hysterical maid Prissy in "Gone With The Wind," died Dec. 22, 1995, from burns she received in a kerosene fire that destroyed her tidy three-room cottage. Her unexpected death "left a lot of loose ends," said Ike Washington, 86.Her will designated Justine Washington, a retired Paine College professor and administrator and a friend for more than 35 years, as executor. The estate closed out Sunday on the one-year anniversary of McQueen's death.
"When people discovered she had passed, they went to take care of her belongings," said Ike Washington. "We rushed to the hospital, and by the time we got to the house, people had moved a lot of things out."
Determining what exactly McQueen owned, or where she stored those belongings, has been almost impossible for the Washingtons. There was no detailed list of her possessions, so the couple has no way of establishing that an item that appeared at a sale in California was stolen from McQueen's house.
"She gave away so many things, how could we prove that she hadn't given something to someone who later sold it?" asked Justine Washington. "We heard that someone had gotten her bicycle, but things like that were not worth worrying about. We did save a charred trunk with her initials on it."
Probated in Richmond (Georgia) County by attorney Jack Long, Mc-Queen's will was in keeping with her meticulous manner, friends said. The actress' generosity was well-known among residents in the neighborhood where she lived off and on for decades.
McQueen, 84, left no family and donated her body to science.
The will specified that two Augusta rental houses go to the tenants living in them and that two more rental houses there go to Mrs. Washington; that bank accounts in Augusta and New York go to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; and that an Augusta checking account go to the Freedom From Religion Foundation in Madison, Wis.
The Washingtons learned that McQueen owned no house in Harlem or on Long Island, as some believed. They know that at one time McQueen did have other property in Augusta but guessed she sold it years before her death.
"I think she would be pleased at how we're scraping things together," Justine said. "Knowing what we had to work with, she'd be pleased with what we've been able to piece together. It's been a job, but when someone places confidence in you, you do your best."