http://blog.washingtonpost.com/postmortem/ 15 en-us Copyright 2008 Wed, 23 Jul 2008 11:54:37 -0400 http://www.movabletype.org/?v=3.36 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Sometimes you hear a tale about someone from the past so vivid, so funny and so surprising that you wish you had a chance to write his obit. But Jonathan Weisman and Madonna Lebling did a fine delayed obit, on the politics page no less, about John McCain's maternal grandfather. And it looks like a tip into the story came from a Washington D.C. cabdriver. Wright arrived in Muskogee a gambler and bootlegger and left a wealthy wildcatter who owned some of the most valuable property in the region. He bartered for that land with gold coins and liquor, as Native Americans were receiving parcels of property from the federal government, according to Murray Clifford "Cliff" Smith III, a District cab driver whose grandmother was Wright's wife's sister. Smith's mother, Margaret Lawson Smith, was a cousin and playmate of Roberta Wright. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/postmortem/2008/07/obit_on_the_politics_page.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/postmortem/2008/07/obit_on_the_politics_page.html Patricia Sullivan Wed, 23 Jul 2008 11:54:37 -0400 We'll have a story in tomorrow's Washington Post (here it is ) that is yet another example of why people read obits. A man with the obit-worthy surname of Graves wrote in an e-mail "My father was a pre-eminent reader of newspapers, both the Post and numerous Russian newspapers.... In a twist you might find interesting, he actually made a rather prominent intelligence breakthrough by reading Soviet obituaries." Well, that correspondent certainly knew how to get an obit writer's attention. Tangentially, I wrote an obit back in 2004 about a scientist, Ancel Keys . Here's the relevant paragraph: In 1947, he noticed the increasing numbers of deaths from heart attacks, as noted in the newspapers' obituary pages, and began to study 283 businessmen from the Twin Cities, conducting examinations and taking blood samples every five years. It showed that smoking, high blood pressure and elevated cholesterol were frequently seen in http://blog.washingtonpost.com/postmortem/2008/07/why_read_obits.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/postmortem/2008/07/why_read_obits.html Patricia Sullivan Thu, 17 Jul 2008 13:56:18 -0400 The "survivors paragraph" in a typical Washington Post obit is fairly rigidly formatted, and for good reason: It's quite common for people, who define family broadly, to seek to include what my grandmother called "shirt-tail relations." It's also unfortunately common for some people to try to exclude a family rival, black sheep or ungrateful sibling. Families have never been as neat and defined as society tries to believe, however; grandparents raise the children of their own missing children, cousins grow up in an uncle's household, a neighbor takes in a stray child and is more of a mother to her than her biological mother. But the world is changing and as I read this Ellen Goodman column, I mused on how an obit writer in the future will deal with the gender-changing parents, the surrogate mother who's really a grandmother, and the brother or sister who becomes the sister or http://blog.washingtonpost.com/postmortem/2008/07/its_all_relative.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/postmortem/2008/07/its_all_relative.html Patricia Sullivan Tue, 15 Jul 2008 11:48:38 -0400 In his Salon.com column this week, Garrison Keillor describes dropping in recently on an old friend in Chicago -- old in both senses of the word. His friend is 96, "but with all his faculties intact, which makes him a natural wonder you could exhibit on the carnival circuit for 2 bucks a head, children under 10 admitted free with a parent. . . ." Keillor doesn't name his friend -- he calls him "The Wonder" -- but it's surely the writer, radio personality and raconteur Studs Terkel. "How does it feel to be 96?" Keilllor asks him. "Lousy!" The Wonder responds. "I'd like to check out." He doesn't though, in part because he wants to hang on long enough to see how the November election turns out. He tells Keillor that the only exercise he got -- I think he means ever -- was sex and carrying a suitcase."The http://blog.washingtonpost.com/postmortem/2008/07/natural_wonders.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/postmortem/2008/07/natural_wonders.html Thu, 10 Jul 2008 14:50:43 -0400 I was out of the office Monday when Michael Dirda, the Post's longtime book critic, sent me an e-mail about the death of Thomas M. Disch. He had known Disch very well and had commissioned him to write dozens of reviews for the Post's Book World over the years. As I mentioned in my obituary, Disch was a remarkably versatile writer who had fallen on tragically hard times in recent years. I described some of the circumstances that led to his suicide on the 4th of July, including failing health, financial trouble and the death three years of his partner. A fire in Disch's apartment building in Manhattan damaged many of his possessions and books, and a flood at his house in upstate New York destroyed just about everything else. Because the rent-controlled apartment was in his partner's name, Disch could not inherit it and was about to be evicted. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/postmortem/2008/07/the_tragedy_of_tom_disch.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/postmortem/2008/07/the_tragedy_of_tom_disch.html Matt Schudel Wed, 09 Jul 2008 16:49:34 -0400 If you're too young to remember the '70s, well, you missed a decade of showmanship, grandiloquent excess, great movies and spirited journalism unlike anything we've seen since. There was more than enough decadence to go around, but it was also a time when great reporting was seen as a way to save the world. (It was the decade of "All the President's Men" and Hunter S. Thompson, remember.) For about nine madcap years in New York, the undisputed emcee of magazine journalism was Clay Felker, who was one of the pre-eminent journalists of his age. Felker died July 1 at age 82, and his obituary appears in today's (July 2) paper. There was no one like Felker, who first made his name ... http://blog.washingtonpost.com/postmortem/2008/07/clay_felkers_new_york.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/postmortem/2008/07/clay_felkers_new_york.html Matt Schudel Wed, 02 Jul 2008 11:33:18 -0400 Clay S. Felker, 82, the visionary editor who founded New York magazine and helped launch the revolutionary New Journalism of the 1960s, died this morning of throat and mouth cancer. Full story. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/postmortem/2008/07/magazine_editor_clay_felker_di.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/postmortem/2008/07/magazine_editor_clay_felker_di.html Tue, 01 Jul 2008 11:03:01 -0400 Not all hermits are wackos. Rolan Craig, a Coloradoan who died June 12 just days shy of her 110th birthday, could shoot, fish, ride horses, herd pigs and cows and "made the best peanut butter cookies in the world," said her great-granddaughter. From vacuum tubes to the Internet, this inventor did it all. Of course, the Net and computers have many fathers; here's another one. TV journalist Ron Hunter (his photo is here) anchored the news in Chicago with Jane Pauley before she departed local news for the "Today" show, and Maury Povich, who would later gain fame in syndicated daytime TV. The dangers of gambling: The guy who started Hardee's lost controlling interest in it in a poker game. Who would you rather dress? Twyla Tharp or Big Bird? This guy did both -- and that finally explains some of those wild ballet costumes! http://blog.washingtonpost.com/postmortem/2008/06/deaths_around_the_world.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/postmortem/2008/06/deaths_around_the_world.html Patricia Sullivan Thu, 26 Jun 2008 11:10:50 -0400 and what i want to know is how do you like your blueeyed boy Mister Death from "Buffalo Bill's," by e.e. cummings George Carlin, who died Sunday at age 71, was no Buffalo Bill, and vice versa, but for some reason I kept thinking of the famous e.e. cummings poem -- first line: "Buffalo Bill's defunct" -- when I was writing the obituary for the comedic curmudgeon. I suppose it's because the sworn enemy of smarmy euphemism often tweaked his nose -- euphemistically speaking, of course -- at Mr. Death himself. Yesterday's Los Angeles Times quoted one of his typical death shticks: "'Older' sounds a little better than 'old' doesn't it? Sounds like it might even last a little longer. . . . I'm getting old. And it's OK. Because thanks to our fear of death in this country I won't have to die -- I'll 'pass away.' Or http://blog.washingtonpost.com/postmortem/2008/06/how_do_you_like_your_boy_mr_de.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/postmortem/2008/06/how_do_you_like_your_boy_mr_de.html Tue, 24 Jun 2008 14:40:03 -0400 The constant tension between families who wish to see their dead relative's life through rose-colored glasses and those of us who insist on a more balanced report (yes, even in the obits) gives rise to some interesting discussions. I had one last week in which a bereft friend said "I mean, Osama bin Laden is still out there somewhere, but (name deleted) isn't." Generally speaking, mentioning bin Laden, or Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot, Idi Amin or other nefarious world figures in the same breath as the subject of the story is frowned upon here, unless there's a stronger link between the subject and the criminal. Osama's childhood friend? Sure, that's an exception. The righteous opponent who fought against him? I'm happy to go into that. Not saying that Name Deleted wasn't a better person than bin Laden, but it's off the point. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/postmortem/2008/06/osama_in_the_obits.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/postmortem/2008/06/osama_in_the_obits.html Patricia Sullivan Tue, 24 Jun 2008 10:59:56 -0400 Purely by chance, our lead obituary and Local Life this week are about two people who overcame handicaps to accomplish remarkable things. The lead obituary is about baseball player Bert Shepard, who pitched for the original Washington Nationals in 1945, despite having had the lower part of his right leg amputated. (And, yes, the team was officially known as the Nationals in 1945, even though they were popularly called the Senators.) Shepard, a fighter pilot during World War II, was shot down over Germany and was almost killed when his plane hit the ground at 380 mph. A doctor at a German hospital amputated his leg and saved his life. (Be sure to read to the end of the obituary to get the complete story, by the way.) Shepard had been a minor-league baseball player before the war and came back more determined than ever to prove his worth on http://blog.washingtonpost.com/postmortem/2008/06/whats_a_handicap.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/postmortem/2008/06/whats_a_handicap.html Matt Schudel Sat, 21 Jun 2008 23:44:33 -0400 Brevity may indeed be the soul of wit, but don't tell that to a reporter. Working from the inflated notion that our words are sacrosanct, we're constantly battling editors demanding that we cut, cut, cut, even when we're compressing someone's life story into 20 inches or less. Although Post obits editor Yvonne Lamb is a gentle surgeon, she too feels an obligation to cut first and ask questions later. (As much as we reporters hate to admit it, a trimmed-down story is usually a better story.) Now comes The Daily Telegraph of London, whose obits editor recently challenged readers to sum up their lives in the brevity of a heartbeat -- six words. The newspaper borrowed the idea from the online literary magazine Smith, which invited its readers to submit their own mini-memoirs. More than 10,000 responded. Here's a Smith sampling: "Navy brat still looking for a home." "Living in http://blog.washingtonpost.com/postmortem/2008/06/brevity_may_indeed_be_the.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/postmortem/2008/06/brevity_may_indeed_be_the.html Mon, 16 Jun 2008 10:27:24 -0400 You tend to get a little jaded in this business, and it takes a lot to shock an obit writer. But yesterday afternoon, when we got word that Tim Russert had died, we -- and the entire staff of the Post -- were in complete shock and disbelief. The paper quickly mobilized, though, and Pat Sullivan of the Obits Desk was asked to contribute background information on Russert's early life for Howard Kurtz's Page 1 obituary. Sometimes we obituary writers resent being "big-footed" on stories, but in this case Howie was the perfect person for the job -- no one knows Washington journalism better, and in 2004 he wrote the definitive profile of Russert for the Post magazine. Tom Shales, who has known Russert for years and ran into him at the airport last week, wrote a touching and deeply informed appreciation for Style. People throughout the newsroom were both http://blog.washingtonpost.com/postmortem/2008/06/tim_russert.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/postmortem/2008/06/tim_russert.html Matt Schudel Sat, 14 Jun 2008 11:49:20 -0400 Meet the Press host Tim Russert died today. Our story online; we'll have a fuller story later. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/postmortem/2008/06/tim_russert_dies.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/postmortem/2008/06/tim_russert_dies.html Patricia Sullivan Fri, 13 Jun 2008 15:50:53 -0400 If you ever have too much of your perfectly happy extended family life, I invite you to sit a few days on a newspaper obituary desk. That almost-formulaic paragraph in most obits that starts "Survivors include..." can be a minefield and one should venture into it with extreme caution. I'm sure a lot of family members think we obit writers are dolts as we laboriously work through everyone's name, as we ask about the length of the marriage and whether there were any other marriages, as we count up the brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, grandchildren and great-grandkids. There are good reasons for skepticism, borne out everyday. Previous spouses are routinely erased from the family's version of the dead person's life. Decades-long sibling rivalries emerge as one daughter "forgets" to mention another or a brother excises the older sibling because s/he hasn't called Dear Old Dad in years. Often, http://blog.washingtonpost.com/postmortem/2008/06/untidy_lives_familial_warfare.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/postmortem/2008/06/untidy_lives_familial_warfare.html Patricia Sullivan Thu, 12 Jun 2008 13:34:01 -0400