Writing an Obituary

As a journalist, I have written many, many obituaries. It’s a regular task–a privilege/challenge–as a community reporter.

As a journalism professor, early in a beginning news writing class, I’d assign the students an obituary to report and write. It teaches all the most critical skills; it’s vitally important to get the information accurate. Every detail. Correct spelling of all of the names. The tight timeline of schools, jobs, hobbies, family.

And there’s the emotional component. In a noisy newsroom on a tight deadline, the reporter must hold a calm, compassionate space and an open heart to elicit the facts and anecdotes of a person’s life, while discerning the best representation of someone’s beloved.

To finish, the reporter then distills those stories and facts into a tribute in type that will fill a limited number of column inches while never limiting the value of the deceased’s life, work and journey on our good earth.

I was prepared–and not prepared–to write the obituary for my father.

I had to make a number of nuanced and important decisions, always in consultation with my bereaved mother.

Which photo? It seems simple–and it’s not. Do we pick a formal portrait? Dad in his military uniform? Or Dad in his dress blues with Mom at a formal ball? Or Dad with a smile on his face, dancing with his wife?

Mom wanted the dress blues or the smiling dancer. The photojournalist in me had to tell my mother neither of those images would render well, a technicality, though an important one. Dad’s face in both small photos would become too pixelated when cropped and enlarged into a head shot for the newspaper.

A portrait of Dad in his military uniform represents only 30 years of his 50-year career. Yet, those full birds on his shoulders, the American flag and the flag with the Corps of Engineers castle flanking him, embody who he was and what he believed and lived, as a soldier and man: duty, honor, service. Do the right thing. Give your word and hold to it. Lead by example.

A person’s word mattered to my dad. Words mattered to my dad, so I took my time to craft each of my father’s obituaries. I needed to write two: one for his second career in Texas, as a civilian engineer, golfer and a grandfather. This obituary ran in The Houston Chronicle.

And then, I embarked on the second obituary for his hometown paper, that would remember and celebrate the young man who became the soldier and veteran who treasured his family, even though duty called him away too many times: husband of 62 years, the father of four, grandfather of two. This obituary ran in the Newport Daily News.

Today I ran into two different people who knew my father from his youth to his final years. They both said his obituary was beautifully written.

His high school buddy George told me that I got it right, that I captured my father in those words: that my father was a good man, an honest man.

And then George opened his arms and gave me a hug.

A precious, much-needed hug in these pandemic days.