About 100 family members and friends paid their respects to Christopher Reeve on Tuesday in a private ceremony at the family's Pound Ridge, N.Y., home. Plans for a larger-scale public memorial are due to be announced next week, a family spokesman tells Reuters.
"The Reeve family is deeply grateful for the outpouring of support shown to them," said spokesman Wesley Combs. "It is clear that Christopher Reeve has touched the hearts of millions of people around the world, and that is the legacy he leaves behind."
Reeve, 52, is survived by his wife, Dana, and their son, Will, 12. He also had two children from a previous relationship: Matthew, 25, and Alexandra, 21. The actor-activist, an ardent campaigner for spinal cord research after he was paralyzed in a near-fatal 1995 riding accident, died on Sunday in Northern Westchester Hospital after suffering a heart attack at his home on Saturday during treatment for an infected bedsore wound.
Meanwhile, producers of an animated film that Reeve was directing at the time of his death are vowing that the project – about a Depression-era boy who meets Babe Ruth – will move forward for a theatrical release in 2006.
"The bulk of what (Chris) was doing as a director is fairly complete," Stephen Brown, chief financial officer of IDT, told The Newark Star-Ledger, adding that Reeve's family will be notified of the film's progress.
Another film directed by Reeve is scheduled to air on the A&E Network later this month, the Associated Press reports. The Brooke Ellison Story tells the true story of a paralyzed young woman who graduated from Harvard.
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