It’s the ultimate assignment to write a summation of someone’s life when they die and it’s important to get it right, David Beard of The Washington Post told an SPJ crowd Nov. 19 at a D.C. pro chapter event on obituary writing held at the Post.
Obituaries are complex yet stylish prose but don’t have to be somber, he added, recalling a line from an obit on famed Hollywood writer-director Billy Wilder to illustrate his point: Wilder had wooed his wife with the line “I’d worship the ground you walk on if only it were in a better neighborhood.”
Beard, who is a member of the Post’s team of obit writers, moderated the panel discussion, which featured three prominent obit writers: fellow Post reporter Adam Bernstein, Adam Clymer of The New York Times and Larry Arnold of Bloomberg News wire service.
“I fell in love with obituaries when I was 22, and I blame Harold C. Fox,” Bernstein explained, referring to a 1996 New York Times obit on the man who claimed to have created the “zoot suit.”
He was taken with the description of the “wide, padded shoulders and broad lapels of the long, billowing jacket to the ballooning high-waisted pants … and the inevitable long, looping watch” of a suit “that not so much defined as defied an era of wartime conformity.”
It got Bernstein thinking “how fun” it would be to do that kind of writing, so as soon as there was a vacancy on the Post’s obit desk, he applied and got the job.
“It’s the gem of the newsroom where we get to write about everything. … Obituaries read like great short stories weeks, even months, after they have appeared in print. We are all generalists. We have to be very careful, we write more than anybody else.”
News obituaries are “an appraisal of a life,” said Bernstein, noting that the obit became a writing form in the mid-19th century. They were “often lyrical” pieces about figures of the day, he said, but by the 1920s a “staccato” approach buried that earlier form. And obits got a reputation for being “the starting ground” young reporters.
“The prestige of the obit went to pot,” Bernstein said, with the exception of those in The New York Times. Starting in the 1980s, obit writers began taking a new approach — witty and more anecdotal.
Obits, Bernstein said, should be a “lively expression of personality and character as well as exposition. A good obit has all the characteristics of a well-focused snapshot. If the snapshot is clear, the reader gets a clear fix on the individual.” Above all they must be accurate, so a tremendous amount of research goes into every Post obituary, he added.
Clymer, who is now retired but does various freelance assignments for the Times, including obituaries, told the audience he first obituaries “when as Adam said it was a time when the newest reporter got stuck with them.”
He said he mostly writes about politicians, like former senators and former governors, and “I try to look at them really as mini biographies.” He said he does a lot of interviews with the subjects while they are alive, so the Times can have these obits in hand to use when the time comes.
“I hardly ever do one on a spot basis. It usually take several weeks,” said Clymer. “The charm of it is I start out with a general impression (of the person) and the joy of it is when you find something about him you didn’t know.
“The Times has rule we are not allowed to discuss ones we have written in advance,” he noted. Clymer said he’s often asked how he interviews somebody for a story that won’t be used until he or she dies. “I mainly deal with politicians, so they see nothing unusual about me calling up to say. ‘The Times wants me to do a story about your career. Many of them wonder why it took so long. Some figure it out. ‘Oh, you are writing my obit.’ Some never figure it out and ask when is this going to appear in the paper and I say, ‘It is up to the editors.’”
Obituaries also are often about the common man or woman who plays a pivotal role in history, and Clymer and the others on the panel have written about those folks, too. Clymer profiled Frank Wills when he died in 2000. He was the security guard on duty the night of the break-in at the Watergate complex in Washington. During his routine rounds he noticed something wrong with an office door and alerted police to a possible break in. “He had fallen on hard times,” Clymer said, “but this person whose attention to work caused a serious of events that led to the first president to resign from office.”
One of Arnold’s most popular obituaries was the one he wrote about actress Bonnie Franklin, who starred in the ’70s series “One Day at a Time,” about a divorced mother of two teenage daughters trying to make it. The response was unexpected, he said, but “must have been because of what the show meant to a generation of viewers.”
Sometimes the subject is a guy who had “five seconds” in the spotlight, liked George Shuba, the player who, by shaking hands with teammate Jackie Robinson, broke the color barrier. That decision showed his character, Arnold said.
He said obits also offer fascinating insights into why people do what they do — or highlight the unexpected turn in a career – like the doctor who got tired of medicine and wanted to spend the rest of his surfing.
Or like Tom Magliozzi, who died last November. He and brother Ray co-hosted “Car Talk” on NPR. With economic and engineering degrees from MIT and elsewhere, he traveled extensively through Asia, but one day while commuting to work, he decided to quit and took on odd jobs. He and Ray opened a do-it-yourself garage which led to a radio gig and eventually their NPR show.
“One of the pleasures of the job is (discovering) what are the life-changing, pivotal moments” for people, Arnold said.
One of the challenges, he said, is sorting through information about a person’s life to get the hard facts. He said that too often the paid-for death notices written by a family member “are rife with errors,” which is understandable because family member are writing about a person they just lost. “But there is also the myth in families — he was the ‘first’ (to do this) he ‘invented’ (that).”
Asked how the Post obit staff decides who to profile, Bernstein said it depends on a number of factors, “principally is this person of such renown you have got write it?” It also depends on space and staffing, he said. You use the standard news judgment you apply to any story, he added.
Sometimes you “get captivated by a three-inch story you found on wire or somewhere else” and it becomes the obit to do. The “best obituaries are the ones you don’t have to write,” he added.
A small detail about the subject of an obit can be the most fascinating thing about the person. Such was the case, Bernstein said, about the big sister of author Harper Lee – her middle name was “Finch,” which just happened to be the surname of Lee’s lawyer character in “To Kill a Mockingbird” — Atticus Finch.