Obit. Page #7

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My dad was in the Army Air Force.

My dad flew a glider and was shot down

in the invasion of Holland

and was a prisoner of war for a while.

You know, by chance that happened to him.

By chance this guy ended up, you know,

as a bombardier of probably

the most famous bombing run in history.

I'd like to think that I wouldn't

have pulled the lever, but who knows?

He ended up thinking it was the right thing

that it shortened the war,

as I guess most Americans still think.

Yeah, that's a wonderful picture.

- We love that. - Looks great online.

Yeah, it looks really good.

It's sharp, you know?

And, William Wilson's widow wrote to me

and, well she sent a couple of pictures

that looked like she shot them on her camera phone,

phone camera or something,

and they weren't very good quality so--

You mean pictures of pictures?

Yeah, they're framed on the wall.

She had a picture of him with Bobby Kennedy.

- Was it any good? - But it's a picture of--

But it's a picture of a picture and the quality is--

I don't know how else-- I don't know how to...

She's also in the middle of dealing

with funeral arrangements, and so--

Have we looked in the morgue for him?

And nothing?

- He was very behind the scenes. - Yeah, yeah.

- I mean, she had-- - An advisor.

- Right. - Call the Kennedy Library.

They could provide something.

I'll bet they have something.

We may want this tonight, too.

Okay.

And Richard Rich.

This one is--

well, this one is actually more fun.

- That's great. - He's in the doorway,

yeah, I love that.

You'd have to run it pretty big, though.

And then there was this, you know,

kind of handout-y, Mad Men-looking--

- Peter, Paul, and Mary. - Or the Mod Squad.

And he's got the cigarette.

Is there a commercial that we can identify him with

and then show an image?

Well, this mentioned Alka-Seltzer.

There's a famous commercial,

"No Matter What Shape Your Stomach ls In."

It's a series of pictures of, or film,

of people's stomachs, just from the neck down.

- And then he did-- - It might be '60s.

He did these Benson & Hedges commercials

where the cigarettes were 100mm.

They were long cigarettes.

So it was all about the cigarette

getting caught in the doors of an elevator,

or you know, poking somebody in the eye

or something like that.

What were they doing smoking in an elevator?

Well, in those days...

Oh, the disadvantages

of the new Benson & Hedges 100's.

They're a lot longer than King-Size.

And that takes some getting used to.

Crushed cigarettes.

Closing elevator doors

or elevator doors shutting?

Jiggling stomachs.

All these things that he had to deal with, I'm sure.

The compacting of language

and using as few words as possible

to say as much as possible, especially in a story

that's only gonna be 500 words long.

Sometimes those are the hardest ones to write.

There's a kind of journalism joke, but true,

about the editor who says to Reporter Joe...

"Keep it short!

You've got to write it short!"

And Joe saying to his editor,

"I don't have time to write it short!"

Anyway, I'll just get to work.

I'll just keep struggling over that lede.

I'm gonna get another cup of coffee, if you don't mind.

Occasionally you get a phone call or a letter

from a person who's close to that person you wrote about

that says, you know,

"Nicely done, appreciate it very much."

And more often than not you get a letter or phone call

that says, "Nicely done, we appreciate it very much,

but..." you know, "and you got something wrong.

And could you, for the record, fix it."

And it's crushing, you know, you feel like, ugh.

Oh, God, it's just-- it's, you know, it's--

it's terrible, it's terrible.

You know, I, um...

You know, every journalist

likes to see his name in the paper.

You love going home from work knowing that you're going

to have a story in the next day's paper.

I was that way my entire career,

until I came to the obituaries department.

Now, I'm terrified when I'm gonna have--

when I have a story in the next day's paper.

I try to check everything I possibly can.

And it's whatever is the thing that I don't check,

that's the thing that I somehow, you know,

missed a little angle on.

That it wasn't a university, it was a college.

It wasn't a cousin, it was a brother-in-law.

But, you know, it's wrong, you gotta correct it.

This sh*t drives me nuts.

And it keeps me awake at night.

There's so much minutiae in a life,

such biographical detail that,

you know, even if you can double-check various facts,

sometimes the original source is wrong.

We need to be extremely careful with any claims

that anybody fought in such-and-such a battle,

in such-and-such a war,

anyone was the first to do something,

anyone was the inventor of something,

anyone had such-and-such an idea first

or was the last to do something.

There's a funny story about a, um...

about a young reporter at The New York Times

who--a very gifted guy who was really gonna go places.

But he was having a hard time with corrections.

He was having a lot of corrections,

so he went to a more experienced reporter,

and he said, "Listen, I'm having a correction problem.

Do you have any advice for me?"

And the guy said, "Yeah, I do.

Don't put in so many facts!"

Obviously family members

are one of the first sources you go to.

Particularly for family information.

However, there-- it is a minefield

because there's such a thing as family myth.

People believe things that are not in fact true.

And it may be because they've been deceived,

or simply because over time

they just came to think that:

"Okay, Dad played football for Notre Dame,"

and that becomes "Dad was quarterback for Notre Dame,"

and then that becomes "Dad was the leading touchdown scorer

for Notre Dame," and it goes on and on.

Military service is notorious for this.

There are certain things

that you instinctively make a little mark in your mind

that "I have to check this out."

Listen, people have selective memories, you know?

And um, I don't think that they make stuff up.

I think that they-- or at least, not very often--

I think they tell the truth as they recall it.

Families are very powerful things,

and particularly after someone dies,

you are trying to remember some things the way they were,

and some things as better than the way they were, I think.

I think she called me "a worthless piece of sh*t,"

was her response to the obituary.

There was another fella who--

I wrote about his stepfather, and he told me

to curl my fist into a tight ball

and knock all my own teeth out.

So, you can't please everybody.

Often I will talk to family members

who tell me what they want in the obit.

And I often have to explain,

"You know, I'm sorry that you don't want that in the obit,

but a fact is a fact."

We are not friends, we are not advocates,

we are certainly not any sort of grief counselor.

We are reporting the news.

We would update with the latest details

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