This week, I faced a situation that I have never had before in my more than two-decade career in community newspapers. I wrote an obituary of a man I knew, but as it turns out, knew very little about.
I teach news writing to college students. That is my primary job at the university. That takes the form of several different classes. The most popular of which is our sophomore level News Gathering and Writing course. It is essentially a media writing class for communications majors to learn best practices for writing for mass media. We cover a lot of ground in this semester. We learn about classic journalistic style, covering news beats and all-around better writing tips.
Towards the end of the semester, I teach a section on writing about death. I explain that death is a prominent topic. We talk about obituaries and about when death becomes a news story. Students are required to write an obituary that week. When I was in college, the exercise was to write your own obituary. I don’t do that with this generation. Rather, I have them imagine their favorite celebrity has died. They must then write their obituary.
Of course, there is academic rigor involved. I tell them there are several things every obituary requires. An obituary requires the person’s full name. An obituary requires their birth date and the date and place they died. An obituary requires some background information about the deceased. An obituary requires survivors to be listed.
I tell them an obituary is a matter of public record. A death certificate has been issued and registered at the county courthouse. An obituary acts in the same manner. While death is a transaction from one life to the next, it is also a legal transaction.
I’ve written countless obituaries in my career and have edited more than I care to remember. I’ve written obituaries that made it on the front page when somebody prominent died.
I’ve written obituaries of young people taken too soon by tragic circumstances. I’ve written obituaries about family members. In fact, I have a few family members who have already supplied me with notes in advance of their inevitable obituary.
Generally, when you write an obituary, you have all the information you need. The family is there to give you anecdotes. They tell you important dates and names. Friends knew the deceased very well and can give those personal tidbits that help do an obituary justice.
I lacked much of that this week when I wrote Larry’s obituary
Larry Andrew Jones passed away late last month. His obituary is on page 3 of this issue. Larry was the minister at the Gordonville Church of Christ for almost a decade. I got to know Larry as a contributing columnist here at the News-Record.
Larry would deliver his columns in person on a flash drive. We would visit. I got to know Larry well, but not as well as I should’ve.
I knew Larry had been sick in recent years. He passed away at a long-term care facility in Denison. He had been furloughed from the church during COVID, worked odd jobs— coupled with his illness— we just had not seen much of him lately.
Larry and I visited often, but those visits hardly scratched the surface. Turns out I didn’t really know that much about him. Unsurprisingly, the folks at the church knew very little about Larry, too. They knew he was their preacher. They knew he was a good one, but they knew he was a private man who didn’t have any family and didn’t talk about personal matters.
I was tasked with writing his obituary— an honor indeed— but a task because the vital information is not available.
The funeral home had his birth date and his full name, and that was about it. He left no family, and he left very few belongings. Between me and a few men at the church, we cobbled together an obituary that I think does Larry justice. At least, I hope it does, because it’s all the information we have.
I knew Larry was a simple man. I knew he was a man of modest means. That was the reason he delivered his column in person. He didn’t pay for internet at his house. He probably couldn’t afford it on a country preacher’s salary. He did his work at the public library. He drove an old truck and worked restaurant jobs to subsidize his income.
I knew he had been married at one time. I knew he was a widower, but I never thought to ask his wife’s name. I knew he was an orphan. I knew his grandmother raised him, but I never thought to ask her name. It’s these little things that we never ask people and maybe we should. These little things that matter.
Larry moved through this world with very little— much like Jesus Christ himself. He also left very little behind— in the physical realm, that is.
Larry dedicated his life to spreading the gospel. He baptized many people at Gordonville and was a good friend to his congregation there. I enjoyed our conversations. Larry and I would talk about the books we were reading. We would talk about matters of faith. We would talk about history.
I told him my great-great grandfather, Henry Lewter, and his brother Alvin were founding members of the Gordonville Church of Christ. In fact, the Lewter brothers took a mule and wagon to Jefferson to purchase the timber to build its first meeting house. That old building was sold in the 1950s and moved. It is now the fellowship hall of the Sadler Methodist Church.
I told him stories about old Gordonville as they were handed down to us over the decades. It was an honor to write his obituary. I just wish I had taken the time to ask more questions and got to know him a little bit better.
The experience reminded me of the importance of asking those little questions— of getting people to talk— and actually listening.
I implore you to take that into account with your day-to-day interactions.
Ask questions, engage, care, remember— you will never regret the questions you ask, but I can attest you’ll regret the ones you neglected.
Source: Vecteezy.com