which contributed to his physical decline. Lesh remarked that, upon hearing of Garcia's death, "I was struck numb. I had lost my oldest surviving friend, my brother." Garcia's funeral was held on August 12, at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Belvedere. It was attended by his family, the remaining Grateful Dead members, and their friends, including former pro basketball player Bill Walton and musician Bob Dylan. Deborah Koons barred two of Garcia's former wives from the ceremony. On August 13, about 25,000 people attended a municipally sanctioned public memorial at the Polo Fields of San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. Crowds produced hundreds of flowers, gifts, images, and a bagpipe rendition of "Amazing Grace" in remembrance. In the Haight, a single white rose was reportedly tied to a tree near the Dead's former Haight-Ashbury house, where a group of followers gathered to mourn. On the morning of April 4, 1996, after a total lunar eclipse earlier that day, Weir and Deborah Koons accompanied by Sanjay Mishra, spread half of Garcia's ashes into the Ganges at the holy city of Rishikesh, India, a site sacred to Hindus. The remaining ashes were poured into the San Francisco Bay. Koons did not allow former wife Carolyn Garcia to attend the spreading of the ashes. Musical equipment Garcia played many guitars during his career, which ranged from student and budget models to custom-made instruments. During his thirty-five year career as a professional musician, Garcia used about 25 guitars. In 1965, when Garcia was playing with the Warlocks, he used a Guild Starfire, which he also used on the début album of the Grateful Dead. Beginning in late 1967 and ending in 1968, Garcia played black or gold mid-1950s Gibson Les Paul guitars with P-90 pickups. In 1969, he picked up the Gibson SG and used it for most of that year and 1970, except for a small period in between where he used a sunburst Fender Stratocaster. During Garcia's "pedal steel flirtation period" (as Bob Weir referred to it in Anthem to Beauty), from approximately 1969 to 1972, he initially played a Fender instrument before upgrading to the ZB Custom D-10, especially in his earlier public performances. Although this was a double neck guitar, Garcia used the "E9 neck and the three pedals to raise the tone and two levers to lower it." He employed an Emmons D-10 at the Grateful Dead's and New Riders