Toronto, Canada (CNN) — Their loved one isn’t dead yet but sure seems to be nearly departed. So you could almost hear the organ and smell the lilies as the obit writers gathered and paid their respects to a dying art.
They drew comfort from one another as only people who write about the dead for a living can — sharing cocktails and gallows humor on a Friday night in June, down in the rathskeller of an historic mansion. A band called Canuckistan played hippie-era classics by Neil Young, Bob Dylan and The Band (RIP, Levon Helm, 1940-2012.)
As the writers nibbled and quaffed, they commiserated about the challenges of staying employed and swapped stories about their favorite obits: the bowlegged ballerina; the bra fitter; the nature photographer who arrived on this Earth a he and departed a she.
A look back at those we have lost in 2013.
Douglas Englebart, the inventor of the computer mouse, died Tuesday, July 2, at his home in Atherton, California, according to SRI International, the research institute where he once worked. He was 88.
Jim Kelly, a martial artist best known for his appearance in the 1973 Bruce Lee movie “Enter the Dragon,” died on June 29 of cancer. He was 67. After a brief acting career, he became a ranked professional tennis player on the USTA senior men’s circuit. Here he appears in the 1974 film “Three the Hard Way.”
Bert Stern, a revolutionary advertising photographer in the 1960s who also made his mark with images of celebrities, died on June 25 at age 83. Possibly most memorably, he captured Marilyn Monroe six weeks before she died for a series later known as “The Last Sitting.”
Alan Myers, Devo’s most well-known drummer, lost his battle with cancer on June 24. Band member Mark Mothersbaugh said in a statement that Myers’ style on the drums helped define the band’s early sound.
Singer Bobby “Blue” Bland, who helped create the modern soul-blues sound, died June 23 at age 83. Bland was part of a blues group that included B.B. King. His song “Ain’t No Love in the Heart of the City” was sampled on a Jay-Z album. Bland was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992.
Marc Rich, the commodities trader and Glencore founder whom President Bill Clinton pardoned on his final day in office, died June 26 at age 78 in Switzerland. Rich often was credited with the creation of modern oil trading. He lived abroad after being indicted in 1983 for tax evasion, false statements, racketeering and illegal trading with Iran, becoming one of the world’s most famous white-collar criminals.
Richard Matheson, an American science-fiction writer best known for his novel “I Am Legend,” died June 23 at age 87. During a career that spanned more than 60 years, Matheson wrote more than 25 novels and nearly 100 short stories, plus screenplays for TV and film.
James Gandolfini died at the age of 51, after an apparent heart attack. Gandolfini became a fan favorite for his role as mob boss Tony Soprano on HBO’s “The Sopranos.”
Country music singer/songwriter Slim Whitman died on June 19, his son-in-law Roy Beagle told CNN. He was 90. Above, Whitman poses with his guitar at a press conference at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London, on February 22, 1956.
Esther Williams, whose success as a competitive swimmer propelled her to Hollywood stardom during the 1940s and 1950s, died on Thursday, June 6 in California, according to her spokesman.
David “Deacon” Jones, who is credited with coining the term “sacking the quarterback” during his stint as one of the greatest defensive ends in the NFL, has died.
Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey died June 3 of viral pneumonia, his office said. Lautenberg, 89, had been the Senate’s last surviving veteran of World War II.
Actress Jean Stapleton, best known for her role as Archie Bunker’s wife, Edith, in the groundbreaking 1970s TV sitcom “All in the Family,” died at age 90 on Saturday, June 1.
Ed Shaughnessy, the longtime drummer for “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson,” has died, a close friend said Sunday. He was 84.
Ray Manzarek, keyboardist and founding member of The Doors, passed away of cancer on Monday, May 20. He was 74.
NASCAR legend Dick Trickle died on May 16 of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was 71.
Popular American psychologist and television personality Dr. Joyce Brothers died at 85, her daughter said on May 13. Brothers gained fame as a frequent guest on television talk shows and as an advice columnist for Good Housekeeping magazine and newspapers throughout the United States.
Jeanne Cooper, who played Katherine Chancellor, the “Dame of Genoa City,” on “The Young and the Restless,” died on May 8. She was 84.
Ray Harryhausen, the stop-motion animation and special-effects master whose work influenced such directors as Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson and George Lucas, died on May 7 at age 92, according to the Facebook page of the Ray and Diana Harryhausen Foundation.
Grammy-winning guitarist Jeff Hanneman, a founding member of the heavy metal band Slayer, died on May 2 of liver failure. He was 49.
Chris Kelly, one-half of the 1990s rap duo Kris Kross, died on May 1 at an Atlanta hospital after being found unresponsive at his home, the Fulton County medical examiner’s office told CNN.
Kelly, right, and Chris Smith shot to stardom in 1992 with the hit “Jump.”
George Jones, the country music legend whose graceful, evocative voice gave depth to some of the greatest songs in country music — including “She Thinks I Still Care,” “The Grand Tour” and “He Stopped Loving Her Today” — died on April 26 at age 81, according to his public relations firm.
Actor Allan Arbus poses for a portrait with his daughter photographer Amy Arbus in 2007. Allan Arbus, who played psychiatrist Maj. Sidney Freedman in the M*A*S*H television series, died at age 95, his daughter’s representative said April 23.
Folk singer Richie Havens, the opening act at the 1969 Woodstock music festival, died on April 22 of a heart attack, his publicist said. He was 72.
Australian rocker Chrissy Amphlett, the Divinyls lead singer whose group scored an international hit with the sexually charged “I Touch Myself” in the early 1990s, died on April 21 from breast cancer and multiple sclerosis, her husband said. She was 53.
Pat Summerall, the NFL football player turned legendary play-by-play announcer, was best known as a broadcaster who teamed up with former NFL coach John Madden. Summerall died April 16 at the age of 82.
Comedian Jonathan Winters died on April 11 at age 87. Known for his comic irreverence, he had a major influence on a generation of comedians. Here he appears on “The Jonathan Winters Show” in 1956.
Sir Robert Edwards, a “co-pioneer” of the in vitro fertilization technique and Nobel Prize winner, died April 10 in his sleep after a long illness, the University of Cambridge said. He was 87. He is pictured on July 25, 1978, holding the world’s first “test-tube baby,” Louise Joy Brown, alongside the midwife and Dr. Patrick Steptoe, who helped develop the fertility treatment.
Annette Funicello, one of the best-known members of the original 1950s “Mickey Mouse Club” and a star of 1960s “beach party” movies, died at age 70 on April 8. Pictured, Funicello performs with Jimmie Dodd on “The Mickey Mouse Club” in1957.
Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, a towering figure in postwar British and world politics and the only woman to become British prime minister, died at the age of 87 on Monday, April 8.
Designer Lilly Pulitzer, right, died on April 7 at age 81, according to her company’s Facebook page. The Palm Beach socialite was known for making sleeveless dresses from bright floral prints that became known as the “Lilly” design.
Film critic Roger Ebert died on April 4, according to his employer, the Chicago Sun-Times. He was 70. Ebert had taken a leave of absence on April 2 after a hip fracture was revealed to be cancer.
Jane Nebel Henson, wife of the late Muppets creator Jim Henson and instrumental in the development of the world-famous puppets, died April 2 after a long battle with cancer. She was 78.
Shain Gandee, one of the stars of the MTV reality show “Buckwild,” was found dead with two other people in Kanawha County, West Virginia, on April 1. He was 21.
Music producer and innovator Phil Ramone, right, with Paul Shaffer, left, and Billy Joel at the Song Writers Hall of Fame Awards in New York in 2001. Ramone died March 30 at the age of 72.
Writer/producer Don Payne, one of the creative minds behind “The Simpsons,” died March 26 at his home in Los Angeles after losing a battle with bone cancer, reports say. He was 48.
Gordon Stoker, left, who as part of the vocal group the Jordanaires sang backup on hits by Elvis Presley, died March 27 at 88.
Deke Richards, center, died March 24 at age 68. Richards was a producer and songwriter who was part of the team responsible for Motown hits such as “I Want You Back” and “Maybe Tomorrow.” He had been battling esophageal cancer.
Legendary publisher, promoter and weightlifter Joe Weider, who created the Mr. Olympia contest and brought California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to the United States, died at age 93 on March 23.
Playboy magazine’s 1962 “Playmate of the Year,” Christa Speck Krofft, died March 22 of natural causes at the age of 70.
Rena Golden, who held top positions at CNN, died at age 51 after battling lymphoma for two years on March 21.
Harry Reems, the porn star best known for playing Dr. Young in the 1972 adult film classic “Deep Throat,” died March 19, according to a spokeswoman at a Salt Lake City hospital. Reems, whose real name is Herbert Streicher, was 65.
Bobbie Smith, who as a member of the Spinners sang lead on such hits as “I’ll Be Around” and “Could It Be I’m Falling in Love,” died on March 16 at age 76. Pictured clockwise from left, Spinners band member Pervis Jackson, Billy Henderson, Jonathan Edwards, Bobbie Smith and Henry Fambrough, 1977.
Sweden’s Princess Lilian, the Welsh-born model who lived with her lover Prince Bertil for 30 years before they were married, has died at the age of 97, the Swedish Royal Court said in a statement.
Alvin Lee, the speed-fingered British guitarist who lit up Woodstock with a monumental 11-minute version of his song “I’m Going Home,” died on March 6, according to his website. He was 68.
Hugo Chavez, the polarizing president of Venezuela who cast himself as a “21st century socialist” and foe of the United States, died March 5, said Vice President Nicolas Maduro.
Bobby Rogers, one of the original members of Motown staple The Miracles, died on Sunday, March 3, at 73. From left: Bobby Rogers, Ronald White, Smokey Robinson and Pete Moore circa 1965.
Actress Bonnie Franklin, star of the TV show “One Day at a Time,” died at the age of 69 on March 1 of complications from pancreatic cancer.
Actor Dale Robertson, who was popular for his western TV shows and movies, died at age 89 on Thursday, February 28.
Richard Street, former member of the Temptations, died at age 70 on February 27. Street, second from the left, poses for a portrait with fellow members of the Temptations circa 1973.
Van Cliburn, the legendary pianist honored with a New York ticker-tape parade for winning a major Moscow competition in 1958, died on February 27 after a battle with bone cancer, his publicist said. He was 78.
Former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop died on February 25. He was 96. Koop served as surgeon general from 1982 to 1989, under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
Damon Harris, former member of the Motown group the Temptations, died at age 62 on February 18. Harris, center on the stool, poses for a portrait with fellow members of The Temptations circa 1974.
Lou Myers, a stage, film and TV actor who memorably portrayed Mr. Gaines on the comedy “A Different World,” died on February 19 at the age of 75.
Los Angeles Laker owner Jerry Buss died February 18 at age 80. Buss, who had owned the Lakers since 1979, was credited with procuring the likes of Earvin “Magic” Johnson, James Worthy, Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant. The Lakers won 10 NBA championships and 16 Western Conference titles under Buss’ ownership.
Country singer Mindy McCready was found dead on February 17 of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, authorities said. She was 37. During her career, McCready landed 14 songs and six albums on the Billboard country charts.
Ed Koch, the brash former New York mayor, died February 1 of congestive heart failure at 88, his spokesman said.
Patty Andrews, center, the last surviving member of the Andrews Sisters, died at her Northridge, California, home on January 30, her publicist Alan Eichler said. She was 94. Patty is seen in this 1948 photograph with her sisters Maxene, left, and Laverne.
Baseball Hall of Famer and St. Louis Cardinals great Stan Musial died on January 19, according to his former team. He was 92.
Baseball Hall of Fame manager Earl Sidney Weaver, who led the Baltimore Orioles to four pennants and a World Series title with a pugnacity toward umpires, died January 19 of an apparent heart attack at age 82, Major League Baseball said.
Pauline Phillips, better known to millions of newspaper readers as the original Dear Abby advice columnist, has died after a long battle with Alzheimer’s Disease. She died January 16 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, at age 94.
Aaron Swartz, the Internet activist who co-wrote the initial specification for RSS, committed suicide, a relative told CNN on January 12. He was 26. Swartz also co-founded Demand Progress, a political action group that campaigns against Internet censorship.
Claude Nobs, the founder of the Montreux Jazz Festival, died aged 76 following a skiing accident.
Richard Ben Cramer, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer whose 1992 book “What It Takes” remains one of the most detailed and passionate of all presidential campaign chronicles, died January 7, according to his longtime agent. He was 62.
Director and stuntman David R. Ellis died on January 7. He directed “Snakes on a Plane.”
Tony Lip, who played mob figures in the hit cable show “The Sopranos” and several critically acclaimed movies, died January 4, a funeral home official said. Lip, whose real name was Frank Vallelonga, was 82.
Character actor Ned Wertimer, known to fans of “The Jeffersons” as the doorman Ralph Hart, died on January 2. He was 89.
Pop-country singer Patti Page died on January 1 in Encinitas, California. She was 85. Born Clara Ann Fowler, Page was the best-selling female artist of the 1950s and had 19 gold and 14 platinum singles.
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Photos: People we lost in 2013
If it weren’t for the obit writers, the world might not know about those people.
Celebrities, heads of state and captains of industry will always get their monuments and grand goodbyes. But the little people, if they’re lucky, get a tidy 1,000-word sendoff from a skilled obit writer.
It helps if that writer comes with an appreciation for the humanity in a death notice about a woman survived by “her son who loved and cared for her,” a daughter who “betrayed her trust” and another son who “broke her heart.” It also helps if the writer has an ear for what the neighbors have to say about a regular guy who was “a good pool player, had an eye for women and never broke his word.”
The passing of an era
It used to be that the writer worked for a newspaper, but not so much anymore. The newspaper business has been writing its own obituary for more than a decade. Memorial websites and do-it-yourself obit kits are springing up to take its place. They’re even talking about putting bar codes on tombstones that can be scanned onto smartphones to conjure up video farewell messages from the deceased.
Words such as dusty, musty and fusty come to mind when you think about obituary writers, if you think about them at all. But the writers who attended this conference were an eclectic bunch. They call themselves “Deadheads,” but they are not to be confused with the tie-dyed, patchouli-scented followers of the band Grateful Dead.
Their ranks include several published authors; one of the original investors of the board game Trivial Pursuit; and the Blogger of Death, who also works the overnight shift at The Huffington Post. Also among them were award-winning obituary writers from big city newspapers in Chicago, Toronto and Boston.
Only one person dressed in black — and that was a top garnished with silvery glitter, suitable for the dance floor. It was worn by Maureen O’Donnell, who grew up in the same neighborhood as serial killer John Wayne Gacy and covered the case of another infamous serial killer, Jeffrey Dahmer. It seemed a natural transition from the crime beat to the death beat.
O’Donnell is known for the poignancy of her obits for the Chicago Sun-Times. Among her favorites are the inseparable couple, married 62 years, who died just hours apart. And then there’s the outdoorsman who survived two attacks by grizzly bears but died peacefully in his own bed.
The new media obit queen, Jade Walker, writes The Blog of Death and is so fascinated by the end-of-life rituals that she exchanged her wedding vows in a cemetery, not far from the grave of the poet Robert Frost.
The rise of the obituary
The literary tradition wasn’t always a fixture on the obit page. For years, obits were considered low-end real estate, a corner of the paper the old folks checked to see whom they’d outlasted. The obit desk was where newsrooms broke in the newbies and put the burnouts out to pasture.
Certainly that’s what they thought they were doing with Jim Nicholson, an investigative reporter from Philadelphia who got on the wrong side of his publisher by looking into an in-house murder with the same zeal he pursued mobsters and biker gangs. Nicholson was banished to Siberia — the New Jersey suburbs — and even worked out of his car for a while.
In 1982, the editors at The Philadelphia Daily News asked Nicholson if he’d like to launch an obits page. He jumped at the chance.
It wasn’t a high-profile assignment, not yet, but it was his ticket out of exile. The first thing he did was strip away the piety and saccharine. He wasn’t interested in polishing halos. Instead, he used his finely honed investigative skills to dig out the details he needed to portray the dearly departed as they truly were, warts and all.
Consider Christopher J. Kelly. The son of a federal judge was shot to death at a tavern in the city’s Overbrook neighborhood. Nicholson later learned that the judge kept a copy of the obit in his desk drawer for years, often taking it out to read during court breaks.
“Every family of any size has one: the uncrowned prince or princess who does not seek special stature but achieves it nevertheless,” Nicholson wrote. “It is not always the oldest, nor the best-looking nor the most successful. Chris Kelly was the favorite uncle, the trusted brother, the loyal son. He would have shunned such descriptions.”
Most people might view Kelly, who lived with his parents and never married or finished college, as a man of meager accomplishments. Not Nicholson.
“A special person? Society today does not assign extraordinary attributes to a 35-year-old heavy-equipment mechanic who is living with his parents and whose possessions do not appear to much exceed a Miller Light and a pack of Marlboros on the bar before him, a union card in his pocket and a friend on either side. But the son of U.S. District Court Judge James McGirr Kelly became exceptional by virtue of his plain and honest choices and the character which drove them. … He had an apartment for a while, but decided to move back with his parents. For no other reason than because he loved them and they loved him.”
You just had to be interesting
Nicholson’s Runyonesque character studies brought in the writing awards and secured him a modicum of fame as the godfather of the Joe Sixpack obit. You no longer needed to be a big shot to get a proper, literary sendoff. You just had to be interesting, and Nicholson found something interesting about nearly everybody.
He didn’t attend this year’s conference in Toronto, but he has been a regular in the past — and he is revered by the others. Andrew Meacham, who writes about dearly departed Floridians for the Tampa Bay Times, considers Nicholson his mentor.
I reached out to The Great One by e-mail, and he was happy to talk obits and why people are fascinated by them. Most people get three opportunities to make the local news, he said: Birth, marriage and death.
Hatch, match and dispatch.
“Obits bring the deceased out onto the public stage, many for the first and only time, to give them a grand goodbye and in effect, decree to all the readers that this was a life well lived,” he explained. “It is a public validation.”
At The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Kay Powell became the South’s Jim Nicholson, chronicling the life and times of a Klansman-turned-civil-rights-activist, a plumbing contractor who happened to be chief magistrate of a group of Gypsies and the inglorious demise of a celestial body:
“Pluto the Planet, 76, died Thursday in Prague, Czech Republic, when it was killed by the International Astronomical Union — downgraded to a lowly ‘dwarf planet.’ No memorial service is planned, because it’s been several years since astronomers considered Pluto a real planet.”
Powell is a natural-born storyteller, in the Southern tradition. She has an eye for characters and for the telling one-liner, which she delivers with a down-home accent and throaty chuckle. She is proud of winning the confidence of the black-owned funeral homes in Georgia, which wasn’t easy but came in handy when the rappers started warring with each other. She retired four years ago.
Some professionals avoid writing obits about family members and people they know. But Powell embraced writing her mama’s obit, using a hybrid of neutral editorial voice and family-style death notice writing to weave in telling details about a Southern lady who enjoyed church meetings and entertaining.
Juanita Powell took in friends, relatives and strays alike: “In fact, after she was widowed, there were 13 toothbrushes in her bathroom, all kept there by people who regularly enjoyed her company,” her daughter wrote.
And there was no gilding the lily: “I don’t know that it’s a wart,” Powell said, “but I did include Mama’s poker-playing in her obit. The preacher at her funeral said he had been a Methodist preacher for 43 years and never knew what the United Methodist Women do at their meetings. After reading my obit for Mama, he said he now knows: They are playing poker.”
Read an obit, learn the lay of the land
Reading obits and paid death notices is a way to take a region’s pulse: In the South, it doesn’t take long to notice how many people go “home” to be with Jesus. In the Northeast, the ritual of one’s demise is much less flowery. People die, there’s a viewing, alcoholic drinks are consumed and then they are buried, after which more adult beverages are served.
Fred Clark had his ashes fired from a cannon into Virginia’s Great Wicomico River. In lieu of flowers, his obit said, he wanted mourners to “get rip-roaring drunk at home with someone you love.”
In California, they are fond of celebrating lives, cremating remains and scattering them in the ocean with the help of the Neptune Society. For those who don’t opt for cremation, it is not uncommon to see mourners pour a cold beer or a bottle of cognac over a grave — a tribute borrowed from the homeboy gang culture.
Many obit writers look to London and The Daily Telegraph’s obits desk, launched in 1986, for inspiration. The Telegraph is legendary for its deliciously droll send-offs. Consider: “Denisa Lady Newborough, who has died aged 79, was many things: wire-walker, nightclub girl, nude dancer, air pilot. She only refused to be two things — a whore and a spy — ‘and there were attempts to make me both,’ she once wrote.”
Telegraph Obituary Editor Hugh Massingberd, often referred to as “Massivesnob,” delighted in details — the more scurrilous the better. Pressed by his superiors to follow the American style of reporting the cause of death, Massingberd responded with the obituary of a man who died when his penile implant ruptured.
Read The Telegraph’s obit for Hugh Massingberd
The New York Times has long been home to the literary, whimsical obit.
The genre was polished by the masters Alden Whitman and Robert McG. Thomas Jr. — McG. for short. (Near the top of everyone’s list is the paper’s Portraits of Grief, thumbnail portraits of the people missing in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that brought down the towers of the World Trade Center. But that project was produced by the news staff of the Metro desk, not the obits page.)
Even at the Times, it wasn’t so long ago that the obit page was viewed disdainfully as “the Irish sports pages,” according to “The Dead Beat,” written by Marilyn Johnson and published in 2006.
That was the year humor columnist Art Buchwald announced his own death in a video obit, part of the “The Last Word” series: “Hi, I’m Art Buchwald, and I just died.” The video includes narration by reporter Tim Weiner, and Buchwald’s musings about his life. It was ahead of its time and showed how far the paper’s obituary page had come.
Now, although an obit subject must still be deemed newsworthy, colorful characters regularly join the stuffy, important people — thanks to deft writers such as the Times’ Margalit Fox. Trained as a linguist, Fox has been writing obits for nearly nine years and seems to specialize in inventors — of the Frisbee, the crash test dummy, the Etch-a-Sketch and the Magic Fingers vibrating bed, to name a few. But she also writes the obits that people share. Consider John Fairfax.
“John Fairfax, Who Rowed Across Oceans, Dies at 74,” reads the headline over the photo of the waving, shirtless man. He was dashingly handsome, and so of course it caught my attention. And then I read the first line: “He crossed the Atlantic because it was there, and the Pacific because it was also there.”
Delightful. But so was the second line: “He made both crossings in a rowboat because it, too, was there, and because the lure of sea, spray and sinew, and the history-making chance to traverse two oceans without steam or sail, proved irresistible.” And so it went, one delicious phrase tumbling into the next: “At 9, he settled a dispute with a pistol. At 13, he lit out for the Amazon jungle. At 20, he attempted suicide-by-jaguar.” At the very end of his bracing run, he passed the time playing baccarat, the game of James Bond.
I posted the obit on my Facebook page and the response was overwhelming. There were other fans of the quirky obit out there. Who knew?
A few weeks later, a reporter friend graced my Facebook wall with the death notice of Michael “Flathead” Blanchard, who “wanted it known that he died as a result of being stubborn, refusing to follow doctors’ orders and raising hell for more than six decades.” He listed his hobbies as “booze, guns, cars and younger women.” He informed the world that “Baba Yaga can kiss his butt,” and that “many of his childhood friends that weren’t killed in Vietnam went on to become criminals, prostitutes and/or Democrats.”
Facebook: Obits’ new stomping grounds
Facebook has become central receiving for quirky obits. That’s how I got to know Harry Weathersby Stamps, Toni Larroux, the bra lady and the rocket scientist.
Stamps, who lived in Mississippi, is perhaps best known as the man who hated daylight saving time.
His obit was written by his daughter, a lawyer from Dallas, and opens with this line: “Harry Weathersby Stamps, ladies’ man, foodie, natty dresser, and accomplished traveler, died on Saturday, March 9, 2013.”
It noted his gustatory passions: “He had a life-long love affair with deviled eggs, Lane cakes, boiled peanuts, Vienna [Vi-e-na] sausages on saltines, his homemade canned fig preserves, pork chops, turnip greens, and buttermilk served in martini glasses garnished with cornbread.” And, it noted that “the women in his life were numerous. He particularly fancied smart women.”
Stamps considered daylight saving time to be “the devil’s time,” and died the day before he would have had to “spring forward” and set the clocks ahead an hour. “This can only be viewed as his final protest,” the family’s obituary noted.
The obit went viral, and it can safely be said that more people knew Harry Stamps in death than in life. Hayes Ferguson at Legacy.com, which aggregates newspaper obituaries, said Stamps so far has received more than 750,000 page views.
Toni Larroux’s family-written obit may have blurred the lines between fact and fiction, but it, too, was a hoot. It was written by her children in a hospital cafeteria as she lay dying. They insisted that it was the way she’d want to be remembered:
“Waffle House lost a loyal customer on April 30, 2013. Antonia W. “Toni” Larroux died after a battle with multiple illnesses: lupus, rickets, scurvy, kidney disease and feline leukemia. She had previously conquered polio as a child contributing to her unusually petite ankles and the nickname “polio legs” given to her by her ex-husband, Jean F. Larroux, Jr.”
Obits for the bra lady and the rocket scientist were written by the same New York Times scribe, Douglas Martin. The bra lady’s obit, clever and uncontroversial, went like this: “Selma Koch, a Manhattan store owner who earned a national reputation by helping women find the right bra size, mostly through a discerning glance and never with a tape measure, died Thursday at Mount Sinai Medical Center. She was 95 and a 34B.”
But the rocket scientist’s obit caused an outcry that led the editors to take the rare step of changing the lead sentence in a published obit.
The original seemed to rhapsodize about Yvonne Brill’s domestic skills at the expense of her career as, well, a rocket scientist: “She made a mean beef stroganoff, followed her husband from job to job and took eight years off from work to raise three children. ‘The world’s best mom,’ her son Matthew said.”
Howls of protest took the beef stronganoff off the menu as the obit was changed to read: “She was a brilliant rocket scientist who followed her husband from job to job and took eight years off from work to raise three children. “The world’s best mom,” her son Matthew said.”
The controversy was a big topic of discussion at the conference. Was it sexist to mention her beef stroganoff before the professional barriers she broke? And was that sexism deliberate?
The obit writers believe it was a misguided attempt at a literary twist. Tom Hawthorn and Bryan Marquard, who both were honored with “Grimmies,” the group’s equivalent of an Oscar, wondered if the outcry would have been as pitched if a woman’s byline, say Margalit Fox’s, topped the obit.
The women, who vastly outnumbered the men at the conference, insisted that it would.
Obituary as essay
And then there was Shelagh Gordon, a 55-year-old woman who was the subject of a lengthy, 5,000-word obituary in the Toronto Star last year. It was meant as an experiment in narrative journalism, as a way to examine an ordinary life in search of the extraordinary.
“I met Shelagh Gordon at her funeral,” began columnist Catherine Porter, the lead writer in an ambitious team effort involving 20 staffers. “She was soap-and-water beautiful, vital, unassuming and funny without trying to be. I could feel her spirit tripping over a purse in the funeral hall and then laughing from the floor.”
Shelagh had never married. She grew up in a large, loud family; nobody noticed until she was 8 that she was deaf in one ear. As an adult, she indulged herself each afternoon in an hourlong bath, reading novels and eating orange slices. She was probably depressed, Porter learned. But she was unfailing kind, as Porter described it, “freshly-in-love thoughtful.” And that kindness touched a lot of people.
“She was both alone and crowded by love. In another era, she’d have been considered a spinster — no husband, no kids. But her home teemed with dogs, sisters, nieces, nephews and her “life partner” — a gay man — who would pass summer nights reading books in bed beside her wearing matching reading glasses.”
Porter, who spoke at the conference, said telling Shelagh’s story changed her. She recalled going through Shelagh’s closet, trying on her shoes to better understand her. It was difficult it to understand how someone so outwardly loving and generous with family and friends also could keep herself closed off, failing to find a spouse or make a mark in the working world.
Whither the obituary writer?
The trade of writing obits is in transition. More than half of the obit writers at the conference have taken buyouts, retired or been pushed out of newsrooms across the United States and Canada. In the wake of such carnage, last year’s conference was canceled altogether.
People who write obits see their work as noble rather than morbid. After all, the business part of an obit — the death — is usually dealt with quickly, with a single line. So-and-so died unexpectedly at home at the age of 108, for example. And then it’s on to the good stuff, the details of ordinary life.
Over the years, the great American novel has, at various times, been declared dead. So have newspapers — and reading altogether. And yet, here you are, right now, at this place near the end of a written story about writing and dead people. So what does that say? Are obits, the nonfiction poetry of the dead, the key to keeping the written word alive?
The simple fact is people love reading, sharing and commenting on obits. Surveys, including those by Northwestern University’s Readership Institute, quantify the phenomenon, as do Harry Stamps, Toni Larroux and the other obits that recently have gone viral online. And where there’s an audience, there’s opportunity, says the Blogger of Death.
Professional obit writers will always be in demand, Jade Walker believes, “because people keep on dying.”
Indeed, some 540 people died around the world while you were reading this story.
People we lost in 2013: The lives they’ve lived
Article source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/07/06/living/viral-obits/?hpt=hp_t5