Our Daily Bread

Rose Martin loved her Corvair. The low-slung, rear-engine vehicle was a popular model in the 1960s until consumer advocate Ralph Nader denounced it as a casket on wheels. Rose ignored his warnings and drove it around her hometown in Rhode Island for 36 years. She kept it functioning—no matter what the cost. So when she died in May 1998, her relatives and friends were not surprised by her desire to be buried in her cherished white Corvair.