I read the obituaries regularly.
Typically, I check the obits in my local paper, the Dominion Post, and in the Spirit of Jefferson, which covers Jefferson County where I grew up. Also, the last thing I read at night is the obituaries in the New York Times, and I’ll get to that in a minute.
I have a long history with obituaries. For years I read obits in the noon news on WAJR, where I worked as the news director. We called them “death notices.” I’m not sure why. Perhaps we thought it sounded better, but the people were just as dead.
But it was legitimate news. In fact, dying is usually the biggest event in a person’s life other than their birth.
That was my job, and I didn’t think a lot about it, but at some point I started reading obituaries out of my own curiosity. I wanted to know if anyone I knew had died, and I suspect that is a sign of aging. You don’t think about it much when you are 29, but you do when you are 69.
Then you naturally share the information with others of about the same age. “Did you know so-and-so died? I didn’t even know they were sick,” is usually how that conversation goes.
I’m keen on checking the ages, even of people who died that I don’t know. It is unnerving to see that someone younger has died. Does that mean I’m living on borrowed time? Then I have to hurry to find an obit where the person lived to be 102 and they still look pretty good in their picture!
So, there is hope for a long life.
I’m thinking about this today because I read in the Dominion Post that long-time Monongalia County Circuit Clerk Jean Friend had died. I knew her and she was always a helpful source for courthouse news and gossip, but we had lost touch. That happens, and we are often reminded when we read an obituary of someone we knew and how people come in and out of our lives.
I read the New York Times obits for different reasons.
They are well-written. Take the Times obituary of Peter Marshall, the West Virginia native and long-time host of “The Hollywood Squares” popular game show. The Times Daniel Slotnik said Marshall “coaxed cheeky rejoinders from celebrities.”
Some of the best have even been published in book form with titles like The Last Word and Book of the Dead. New York Times obituary editor William McDonald said that since some 155,000 people died between each day’s print version of the Times, they have to be very, very selective.
“We focus on people who made a difference on a large stage — people who, we think, will command the broadest interest. If you made news in life, chances are your death is news, too,” McDonald said.
Reading those Times obits is not only interesting, but also educational. For example, earlier this month the Times had an obit for Peter C. Theisinger. I had never heard of him, but he was a guy who “tinkered with hobby kits” as a kid, then grew up to oversee projects for NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory that landed three rovers on Mars. That is a consequential life.
Since I’m writing about obituaries I have to work in this quote, which is attributed to Clarence Darrow. It doesn’t really fit the theme of this commentary, but I just can’t resist.
“I’ve never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.”