Post Mortem: June 7, 2009 - June 13, 2009
Lucy in Sky with Diamonds muse ill
Lucy Vodden, the woman who was the inspiration for the Beatles "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" song is gravely ill, AP reports. She never dug the description of herself as the "girl with kaleidoscope eyes," but millions of LSD users did....
By
Patricia Sullivan
|
June 12, 2009; 1:51 PM ET |
Permalink |
Comments (0)
Categories:
Musicians
,
Patricia Sullivan
Save & Share:
The Daily Goodbye
Good morning, obit fans. Don't forget to vote in our Best Obit of the Week user poll , and as always, we welcome comments and discussion. The last surviving member of the legendary Ink Spots, Huey Long, has died. He set up a museum which has a lot more information...
By
Patricia Sullivan
|
June 12, 2009; 8:28 AM ET |
Permalink |
Comments (0)
Categories:
The Daily Goodbye
Save & Share:
Best Obit of the Week
What did you like? Vote now! POLL Did we miss a good one? Tell us in the comments section below....
By
Patricia Sullivan
|
June 12, 2009; 7:55 AM ET |
Permalink |
Comments (0)
Categories:
Poll, survey
Save & Share:
Shout Out From Washingtonian
Washingtonian magazine's June issue has a nice shout out to the Post obit desk, courtesy of Harry Jaffe. It starts: "Washington Post readers might mourn the loss of beloved sections: Among the dearly departed are Sunday Style (now combined with Arts), Book World, and Business. But obituaries are having a...
By
Adam Bernstein
|
June 12, 2009; 6:00 AM ET |
Permalink |
Comments (0)
Save & Share:
A Grave Problem
Lexy Chubrich of Tempe, Ariz., is an obit fan and recently wrote to us posing a question about the funeral of her grandmother, Sophie Kolember Chubrich, who died May 30 at 91. Lexy Chubrich writes: I've just returned from attending my grandmother's funeral in Chicago and just wanted to share...
By
Adam Bernstein
|
June 11, 2009; 11:59 AM ET |
Permalink |
Comments (1)
Categories:
Adam Bernstein
Save & Share:
The Daily Goodbye
After a long layoff, we're reviving the Daily Goodbye, a compendium of the best recent obits on the web. You can tell us what we missed in the comments section below, and you'll be able to vote on your favorites tomorrow. We're going to try to make this a much...
By
Patricia Sullivan
|
June 11, 2009; 8:14 AM ET |
Permalink |
Comments (0)
Categories:
The Daily Goodbye
Save & Share:
The Funeral Director's Art
Mostly we think about a person's life when writing or reading obituaries. But there's no denying that these stories are triggered by death, and in death, a funeral director and his or her staff directly handle issues that most of us never think about. One of those issues is make-up....
By
Patricia Sullivan
|
June 10, 2009; 12:21 PM ET |
Permalink |
Comments (0)
Categories:
Patricia Sullivan
Save & Share:
'Hi, my name is. . . '
Norman Brinker, a Dallas restaurant entrepreneur who died June 9 at age 78, made millions by offering casual dining choices at such places as Chili's, Bennigan's, Romano's Macaroni Grill, Maggiano's LIttle Italy and On the Border Mexican Grill and Cantina. Here's what Dave Simmons of the Dallas Business Journal said...
By
Joe Holley
|
June 9, 2009; 5:40 PM ET |
Permalink |
Comments (1)
Save & Share:
Q&A: Italian Americans in Jazz
Chicago-based author and educator Bill Dal Cerro contacted the obituary desk last week after I wrote about Sam Butera, the hard-driving tenor saxophonist whose musical partnership with Louis Prima in the 1950s and 1960s made them a major national act. Their prominence as Italian Americans who played jazz attracted the...
By
Adam Bernstein
|
June 9, 2009; 11:07 AM ET |
Permalink |
Comments (0)
Categories:
Adam Bernstein
,
Musicians
Save & Share:
Calling Santa Claus
Joe Holley's fine piece about the White House phone engineer this morning immediately reminded me of an obit I'd written last year about the woman who had been in charge of the White House switchboard for years, Mary Burns. In it, I told the story about how she could get...
By
Patricia Sullivan
|
June 8, 2009; 12:30 PM ET |
Permalink |
Comments (1)
Categories:
Joe Holley
,
Patricia Sullivan
Save & Share:
How Obits Have Changed
Nice piece in Obits magazine about how newspaper obituaries have changed over the years. It seems that the Civil War was a turning point; previously "writers were striving to convey the reality of death without having to state the unpleasant truth that somebody had actually died. So readers learned of...
By
Patricia Sullivan
|
June 8, 2009; 11:19 AM ET |
Permalink |
Comments (0)
Categories:
Patricia Sullivan
Save & Share:
No RIP for Carradine
So the actor who, in his most famous role, conveyed the inscrutable innner calm of a Chinese mystic is finding anything but now that he's gone. David Carradine, the old "Kung Fu" hero, is most assuredly not resting in peace since his body was found in a Bangkok hotel room...
By
Joe Holley
|
June 7, 2009; 3:38 PM ET |
Permalink |
Comments (1)
Save & Share:
Weasel Words
Well, it's been a busy two days here on the obits desk. On Friday, I completed the Local Life of Paul Wasserman -- a librarian who founded the University of Maryland's College of Information Studies (as it's now called, to his chagrin). More about that in a moment. On Saturday,...
By
Matt Schudel
|
June 7, 2009; 7:27 AM ET |
Permalink |
Comments (0)
Categories:
Matt Schudel
Save & Share:
