Sally Bishop Worcester Artist and Art History Teacher at 58 Globe

The art of obituary writing

How does a announcer sum up in 1 story the impact of a lifetime?

"Working the Story" is a video feature of the Chicago Sun-Times that explores how our reporters practise their jobs.

Chicago Sun-Times obituary writer Maureen O'Donnell has written nigh the lives of the deceased for the paper since 2009 and has won numerous awards for her writing, oft bringing to lite boggling things almost seemingly ordinary people. Prior to condign the Sunday-Times obituary writer, she spent xx years as a general assignment reporter.

Columnist Neil Steinberg – an award-winning obit writer himself – talks with Maureen about researching and reporting obituaries – from choosing subjects to feature of the many who've passed away to preparing obits in accelerate of the deaths of public figures. Plus, each recalls memorable obits they've written over their careers.

Transcript of conversation

[00:00:00] STEINBERG: Hi, I'm Neil Steinberg. I'grand here today in the newsroom of the Chicago Sunday-Times with Maureen O'Donnell, my colleague of a long time.

[00:00:06] O'DONNELL: Aye, and we have something in common.

[00:00:08] STEINBERG: We practise have something in common; nosotros're both obituary writers.

[00:00:11] O'DONNELL: We are both members of the Gild of Professional Obituary Writers. I happen to be the [past] president. Neil is an esteemed member.

[00:00:18] STEINBERG: I talked to the group final yr, and I was then excited to exist talking to people who were interested in writing obituaries that I immediately signed up, plus your graphics are really cool. Let'due south talk about obituary writing. Y'all've get quite well known for it. What'due south the primal?

What practice you bring to an obituary that yous don't bring to a standard story about a gas main break?

[00:00:41] O'DONNELL: Well I think obituary writing connects the dots between the by and the present. Nosotros're writing virtually people who are piffling known heroes from downward the block or from Niles East Loftier Schoolhouse, people that you may have grown up aslope, the friendly grandfather or grandmother that y'all would meet at the store. And it turns out they have incredible stories connected to history. They may have changed the course of history. There's a woman I wrote nearly named Viola Lennon who was the mom in Franklin Park I believe in the '50s. And at the time breastfeeding was looked upon as archaic, unsanitary, frowned upon oft by the medical establishment, and she and a group of other moms from that Franklin Park living room started the La Leche League. Then now it has millions of followers around the globe.

An ordinary woman from Franklin Park, Viola Lennon, who had a lasting influence on maternity every bit one of the founders of the La Leche League. | Provided to the Sun-Times

[00:01:35] It advises many new moms. When Princess Grace of Monaco came to Chicago in 1971, she treated Viola Lennon and all the other La Leche League moms from the suburbs like rock stars. She said affairs of state in Monaco had to look until she took care of her children and breastfeeding, so these women when they would go out and near and other moms saw them and recognized them. "Can I have a picture with you Miss Lennon?" Then you're connecting people from the past and the present.

[00:02:06] Alva Roberts was the first lady of a church in Chicago that hosted the funeral for Emmett Till, the 14-yr-old who was lynched in Mississippi. And his mother Mamie Till [Mobley] said, "I want the world to run across what was done to him." So there was an open casket and fifty,000 people came to Alva Roberts' church; she comforted the people who were collapsing when they saw Emmett Till. Her hubby was at the train station when Emmett Till's trunk came back from Mississippi. So here'due south a adult female who walked amongst us that she's connected to that incredible moment that was a pivotal impetus for the civil rights movement.

Mamie Till Mobley collapses when her son Emmett Till's body arrives at the sometime Illinois Central Railroad station after his murder in Mississippi. On her left, with the white collar, is Alva Doris Roberts' husband, Bishop Isaiah L. Roberts, who presided over the funeral. On the right, likewise dressed in clerical blackness, is Bishop Louis Henry Ford, who gave the youth's eulogy. An Illinois freeway is named afterward Bishop Ford. | Sun-Times archives

Alva Doris Roberts | Provided to the Sun-Times

[00:02:49] STEINBERG: Now I presume these stories when they came to you they mentioned the La Leche League, they mentioned Emmett Till. Practice yous sometimes have to kind of dig into a person'due south life and here you're talking to people who are grieving who accept merely lost a loved one.

How practise you get almost trying to ferret out the interesting parts?

[00:03:05] O'DONNELL: In the instance of Alva Roberts, I ferreted that out myself.

[00:03:09] STEINBERG: Oh, wow. They didn't say "Hey, this is the big news."

[00:03:13] O'DONNELL: Right. Merely really a reader let me know about the decease of the La Leche League founder, but you know at that place's gilded out there if y'all heed to people, if you read decease notices, if yous have calls from interested readers. You hear fascinating stories.

[00:03:29] I plant out from a death notice about Jim Cole, a Highland Park High School graduate, who turned out to exist the only known person in North America to have survived not ane – merely two – dissever attacks by grizzly bears. Lost an eye in the process. He was a wildlife lensman who got too close to the grizzlies on 2 separate occasions, had to take his face rebuilt, survived, used to perform at Montana nightclubs every bit 'Grizzly Jim' where he sang songs about the grizzly comport. I called it an unrequited love thing. Yep.

Jim Cole, a Highland Park native and survivor of TWO grizzly bear attacks. This is Cole after being mauled. | Provided to the Sun-Times

And Jim Cole passed away of natural causes in his ain bed, and it was, you know, I just saw a line in a expiry notice that mentioned that he had, he had this special relationship as a wildlife photographer. And if you google him at the time of his death, there was another Jim Cole who was a photographer and if you went to the wrong Jim Cole's website there was a line on there that said "I am not the Jim Cole who keeps getting attacked past grizzly bears." (Laughs)

[00:04:33] STEINBERG: That'southward very funny. Well, you have to brand sure all your facts are right. I mean you make sure your facts right in every story, simply in an obituary where there'due south that actress level of importance, considering information technology's the final story that person'due south gonna get.

[00:04:45] O'DONNELL: Yes, considering people carry them around in their wallets. They notwithstanding cutting them out and carry them around in their wallets in this digital age, or they check it on their phone, and they return to it and they reread it and they reread it. And I retrieve information technology's sort of, it'southward a condolement to a lot of people and an inspiration.

[00:05:04] I call up cutting out an obituary that I read years ago. This man died when he was very immature, but he, y'all know, had done marathons and, yous know, climbed mountains, and I kept it in my handbag for a long time for those days when I didn't feel like maybe getting out of bed, or feeling down, you know. So they are inspirational.

[00:05:25] STEINBERG: I read a book past a pair of women who were inspired to write a book because of this obituary. It was one of the mushers to a famous run bringing anti-diptheria serum to Nome, Alaska in 1925. The Cruelest Miles. Information technology was a great, good volume.

[00:05:40] O'DONNELL: We had some other man I wrote almost recently, Aaron Elster. He survived the Holocaust. He was a subconscious kid during the Holocaust. Simply more than recently he became one of just, I recollect, fifteen people to have participated in a hologram push. There are 15 Holocaust survivors who sabbatum in L.A., I call up information technology was at the USC Shoah Foundation, state-of-the-fine art applied science. They answered 2,000 questions while fifty cameras were trained on them, so that a hundred years from now schoolchildren and others will be able to talk to their holograms and detect out about their story.

Aaron Elster, a Holocaust survivor who hid in a neighbour'south cranium for two years fearing for his life with an undying will to live. The Smooth native ofttimes spoke most his horrific experience. | Marina Makropoulos/Dominicus-Times

[00:06:xx] STEINBERG: I loved your obit because I had met him and heard his presentation. I did a story about they were preparation rookie cops at the Holocaust museum; he happened to exist 1 of the guys there telling his story. He was a very gripping speaker.

[00:06:34] O'DONNELL: There'south another guy I wrote about, Paul Kraus. Mr. Kraus was a liquor distributor, but at that place was a little line in his decease notice that caught my attention. I started looking up data about him, talking to his family. Turned out he was an American Thou.I., born in Austria who had survived the state of war by leaving Austria to get educated. His unabridged family perished in the Holocaust, but he was fluent in Czech, English language, High german, and he is the man who apprehended Hitler's favorite soldier, Otto Skorzeny. He recognized him in a prisoner of war army camp by his dueling scars, and there'due south even a German word for them it's something like [German], I'm sure I'm butchering it but he saw the dueling scars, recognized Skorzeny and realized this is the man who helped Benito Mussolini the Italian dictator escape from a mountaintop prison. This is the man who supposedly had Nazis dressed in American uniforms to sow disinformation at the Battle of the Bulge. This is the man rumored to have been prepare to assassinate Dwight Eisenhower, our supreme commander in the state of war, and at the time Paul Kraus merely had a pocketknife and fork on him. Skorzeny had a sidearm because this prisoner of state of war camp allowed German contumely to carry weapons.

Paul Kraus, an Austrian-born American GI who nabbed loftier-ranking SS officer, Otto Skorzeny, when Mr. Kraus recognized the dueling scars on his face. Skorzeny helped pb a commando mission that freed Benito Mussolini from a mountaintop jail, and was accused of dressing Germans in American uniforms to sow anarchy at the Battle of the Bulge. | Provided to the Sun-Times

[00:07:59] Then he's kind of, you know, very nonchalantly said, "You. Volition yous stride in this role with me?" He got the gun abroad from him. Got his own gun from a drawer and said, "I believe you're Otto Skorzeny. I believe you're the man who Hitler sometimes said was his favorite soldier." And Skorzeny said, "Yes, yes I am."

[00:08:xx] On summit of that, Paul Kraus served in the military with Audie Potato, who is credited with 200 kills in World War Ii. Very famous soldier, probably the most decorated soldier of World State of war II, who went on to a Western career in Western movies, and Paul Kraus was an alpine skier who was shushing downwardly slopes into his 80s. But at the end of his life he told his family he wanted to be cremated just he said, "Don't bring anything of me dorsum to Republic of austria. They didn't want me." What a life. What a life.

[00:08:55] STEINBERG: Yous're plainly excited about all this. Do y'all ever notice yourself where I mean when yous accept heroics and stories like that it's easy. You e'er find yourself at a dry well? Do yous have to tell the families, distressing his life just wasn't worthwhile?

What practise you do if it's non interesting enough to publish?

[00:09:13] O'DONNELL: Everyone has a story. Everyone has a story. And information technology doesn't take to be a World War II hero. A couple of years agone I did a story about Mike Hawkins, and he was an instructor at the Harold Washington Library. He taught kids digital media. Information technology was a creative identify for poetry slams and breakdancing, and he was a mentor to somebody who we now know as Take a chance the Rapper. So everybody has a story, everybody has something that they did that made history or influenced other people or inspires other people.

Poet "Brother Mike" Hawkins was a mentor to many young people across Chicago and connected students with digital media that helped them record their songs and poetry and create tape labels and videos. His piece of work influenced Chance the Rapper, among others. | Provided to the Sun-Times

[00:09:53] Yeah, there was an obit I did of awhile back for the DeMuros, a couple that died only inside hours of each other after being married for something similar 67 years. And they survived the Great Depression in part by going around Chicago and making what they called 'meatballs' out of eggs and these greens that they foraged from city lots. I mean, a petty fact like that helps you empathise how people survived the Low.

[219:37:43] STEINBERG: The obituaries tin can exist a expect into a historical era that people have forgotten about our past.

[00:ten:28] O'DONNELL: Yeah. There's another i I did and so I volition end talking, and allow you ask questions. A adult female named Rose Shure. She heads up a company called Shure Electronics in Niles. OK. Doesn't sound that interesting, but Shure microphones are all over the world. Martin Luther King did the "I Have A Dream" voice communication with a Shure microphone. The U.S. postage postage with Elvis Presley leaning into a mic. That's a Shure mic. Lou Reed picked Shure mics. Roger Daltrey, when he swung the mic around his head. That'due south a Shure mic. Now mod musicians including Cage the Elephant, Xx One Pilots, Maroon 5. They're all loyal to Shure mics. How interesting is that?

Rose Fifty. Shure, chairman of Niles-based Shure Inc., lived to age 95. | Provided to the Sun-Times

The Shure Model 55 Unidyne Dynamic Microphone has been in continuous production, essentially unchanged, since 1939. | Neil Steinberg/Sun-Times

[00:11:11] STEINBERG: I went through the Shure headquarters just considering information technology was such an interesting building, and that microphone you're talking, that model what I thought was so swell about it. It's a slice of engineering science that'south 75 years erstwhile. I retrieve they changed an aluminum diaphragm to silicon. Simply other than that, a bully company. They but last week opened the downtown part. That'due south the swell thing near obituaries. You get-go in Point A. And information technology sort of brings yous to other points, as well.

The Shure headquarters building in Niles was designed by Helmut Jahn. | Neil Steinberg/Sun-Times

[00:11:36] O'DONNELL: And then this history is all around us, and information technology connects everyone, it connects us to the past. Information technology connects us to survival, it connects us to creativity, inspiration.

[00:11:47] STEINBERG: Anybody wants to think their life is meaning, and every life is significant in some way. One affair, you lot've done. Yeah, you might not be famous, simply you take a story to tell. I agree with that.

[00:11:58] O'DONNELL: Tin can I tell yous about one more than? Margaret Vinci [Heldt]. She'southward a local woman, died a few years ago. She is the creator of the beehive hairdo. It'south a hairdo that became famous with Brigitte Bardot in the Ronettes, and information technology's still popular today. Information technology's a hardy perennial. Amy Winehouse, Adele, Beyonce, they've all sported the beehive hairdo, and information technology'due south all provable. She won a contest that was started I recall by Modern Salon magazine. And there was an showroom about her at the Chicago History Museum and she's the woman who invented the beehive hairdo.

Retired hairstylist Margaret Vinci Heldt is shown in 2011 in her Elmhurst flat. Heldt developed "the beehive" hairdo when a magazine was looking for something new and different to characteristic in its February 1960 issue. The black velvet hat on the table was the inspiration for the hairdo. | Caryn Rousseau/Associated Printing

Do you ever discover a life and you sort of hold on to it, waiting for the person to die?

[00:12:43] O'DONNELL: Well, we do. As you know, both of us have done accelerate obituaries, yous've washed a lot more than I take, and I'd love to ask you a question well-nigh that. Merely I recently became aware that Della Reese was ailing, and she's somebody who you know, currently people may know her every bit an angel from the bear witness 'Touched By an Angel' or other TV shows that she appeared on including 'Chico and the Human' and another mod Tv shows. Merely dorsum in the '50s she was incredible torch singer, a chanteuse.

Della Reese, in her early days as a nightclub performer. | Lord's day-Times archives

Shown in 1991, Reese plant her greatest fame as Tess, the wise angel in the long-running television drama "Touched by an Angel." She died at age 86. | AP Photo/Douglas C. Pizac

[00:13:22] In that location were lines out the door in Chicago's nightclub heyday when she sang. Ramsey Lewis told me every bit shortly as she sang a few notes y'all knew who it was, but like Dinah Washington or Sarah Vaughan. You lot knew that was Della. She was a stylist. And so I prepared her obituary knowing Della Reese was very ill, and information technology is an incredible story. Glamorous, cute photos, only a wasp-waisted beauty, lit by this incandescent light. And so it was really interesting to me, our readers really responded to that. They said, "I didn't know that she had this whole life before she was on television."

[00:14:04] STEINBERG: Some readers are uneasy with the idea of doing obituaries ahead of fourth dimension, it seems ghoulish. Merely the truth is especially with historic figures who've had these complex lives, if y'all're called to practise it on deadline, y'all're nowadays when things have to become up immediately. I retrieve I was at Rahm Emanuel'southward first inauguration and Jane Byrne, the old mayor, came by and she was very delicate and aptitude over and walked like this, and remember looked at her thinking. I'd ameliorate get on her, considering I did it several years in advance…

[00:14:32] O'DONNELL: Because y'all want to do it thoroughly, comprehensively and insightful.

[00:14:37] STEINBERG: She wrote a great autobiography called "My Chicago" which, you lot know, on deadline, y'all're not going to sit down and starting time to read it. But since there was no rush, I can read it and then I interviewed other people and I thought about information technology and because I had washed all that, for instance, I knew she was turning fourscore years quondam.

Jane Byrne smiles brightly every bit she shakes hands with Rep. Harold Washington in January 1982. | Sun-Times athenaeum

[00:14:55] And so in my cavalcade, I could write a letter of the alphabet to [Jane Byrne] about her accomplishments, things I learned writing that, so information technology not but has the benefit I hateful with information technology. When she died, the Tribune put their obituary up in pieces similar it was a breaking news story. We had something that was complete and set to go, thought out and I was very proud of that because all of usa terminate at some indicate. And you want something. I've washed lots of work where the questions come, and I'll call you or someone who was famous and they did a sure affair and so they went on and spent 20 years in this place. Usually in the obituary they'll say and they went to this police force firm for 20 years. Why not phone call the police firm up and talk near what the person did there? Give a fiddling more richness.

[00:15:38] O'DONNELL: I'd dearest to hear the story about the obituary hunt that yous worked on that turned up a connection to Emerge Rand, the Peacock of the Century of Progress Globe's Off-white– the fan dancer–and Frida Kahlo.

Would y'all talk nearly Emerge Rand and Frida Kahlo?

[00:15:55] STEINBERG: The commencement one was the obituary of Abraham Lincoln Marovitz, and kind of how I got into the obituary business. My brother came back from Japan with a adult female he was going to ally. So I needed a judge to marry my blood brother in my living room and at the fourth dimension Fine art Petacque, you lot recall, a [Sun-Times] mob reporter. And I said, "Artie, I demand a judge." And he goes, "I'll become you lot a judge. I'll go you lot the nearly famous guess in Chicago. Abraham Lincoln Marovitz."

Abraham Lincoln Marovitz, 84, joins erstwhile Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley and his female parent, Eleanor, in the national canticle during a ceremony dedicating role of Plymouth Courtroom to the venerable senior U.S. district guess. | Sun-Times archives

[00:23:04] Marovitz was a man who was born in 1905 and became a lawyer at a time when you didn't have to go to college. So he was very young, and he became this mover and shaker in the '20s. And when the Empire Room in the Palmer Firm opened in 1933, he took Sally Rand the stripper to the opening of the Empire Room. And hither's a man who I met. OK. Because he had been to my house, I started to research his life, and he had been a Marine and at the historic period 37 and could have run for governor. And so in one case I'd done all this enquiry, then I wrote it upwardly thinking and to testify you the kind of collateral benefit, his secretary was a adult female who he had an affair with for 65 years. Okay, going back to the 20s when she was a Cosmic secretarial assistant, he was Jewish. Information technology was an Abie's Irish Rose thing. They couldn't marry. So when she died, I knew that at that place was this wonderful love story every bit well. And I'll never forget he, privacy was of import to him and he didn't desire me to tell it, because he didn't want people to know.

[00:17:20] O'DONNELL: But it's a story that connects united states of america to history, changing mores.

[00:17:24] STEINBERG: I said, "Your honor." I didn't want to disrespect him, I said "How near if I write it non every bit an obituary merely as a column, and and so I won't employ whatever names. So if anyone doesn't know, they're non actually told. If they know, they already know. So I began the column, 'A man and a woman fell in dear' and he carried that cavalcade in his wallet for the remainder of his life.

[00:17:41] And the other i. Frida Kahlo was really, is almost fifty-fifty improve. Nosotros had done a ceremony story for the 20th anniversary of the death of Richard J. Daley in 1996, and we had different photos with people talking and their ages. And I started to expect at the older ones and call up well you know one of them was Leon Despres. And I pull the hard clips.

Grouping with fifth ward alderman and activist Leon Despres on bikes riding in protestation of cutting downward trees near 50th and the Lake. | Sun-Times archives

[00:xviii:01] O'DONNELL: Independent Chicago alderman.

[00:18:01] STEINBERG: Right. From Hyde Park, 5th Ward. And he had such wonderful quotes, where he tried to defund the Chicago Public Schools in 1963, proverb you're raising children in dissentious racial isolation, and he was so prescient, he spoke out against the projects when they were existence built. OK. He founded the architectural heritage group in Chicago because they were going to tear downward the Robie Business firm and build a parking lot. Alright so I figure I've got to take this guy out to lunch. Then I take him out to lunch, and nosotros starting time talking, it turns out that he had gone on a date with Frida Kahlo, the feminist art icon in 1937 and the style he did was he was a communist sort of in the manner you gave coin to the communists at the fourth dimension, is you went to United mexican states and you had Diego Rivera, who was Frida Kahlo's 'hubby,' pigment your motion-picture show while you know, and then gave them more money than the motion picture [was] worth. Anyhow long story short, while Diego Rivera was painting Leon Despres' wife's photo, really, he did a pastel, he took Frida Kahlo to the movies.

"2 Nudes in the Forest (The State Itself)" by Frida Khalo, was poised to gear up a new auction tape for the Mexican painter at Christie''due south auction of impressionist and modernistic art on Th May 12, 2016. | AP Photo/Mary Altaffer

Renowned Mexican artist Frida Kahlo | Source: Academy of Arizona Foundation/Philadelphia Museum of Art via Bloomberg News

[00:xix:11] O'DONNELL: And this is a man who sat in the Metropolis Quango chambers for 20 years. Who knew?

[00:nineteen:15] STEINBERG: You lot know, he was just, information technology was just an amazing story. 1 of my favorite ledes was the lede to his obituary, was, "Few things are sadder or more than haunting than to imagine what Chicago might take been like had anyone listened to Leon Despres." He called upon the city.

[00:19:33] O'DONNELL: Full circle. Yes, yeah.

[00:19:34] STEINBERG: It's such a privilege to run into these people and to think of the life and that'south the downside of writing obituaries for me is you look at your own life and yous go well, you know.

[25504:22:34] O'DONNELL: There'southward a New York Times obituary writer who was interviewed for the documentary "Obit," and he said when I write obituaries often I fall in dear a little with that person, you get and then immersed in their life.

[00:19:56] STEINBERG: I think you take to, y'all experience protective of them. They're your obit. You sort of, you want to brand sure they're handled properly.

[00:twenty:03] O'DONNELL: There was an obit I did recently. I found out about him from a colleague, a swain accountant said you've got to write about this guy. Accountants come in for a lot of corruption and non having the most exciting jobs. Well, he said, "You've got to write almost Rudy Horne." Rudy Horne was the mathematics adviser on the moving picture, Hidden Figures. He's the guy who not merely made sure that all of the calculations Taraji Henson was writing on the chalkboard were correct. But according to Morehouse College, Rudy Horne, who grew up in Chicago, also came upward with the central moment when they're trying to effigy out how to get John Glenn back safely from space. In that location's a line of dialogue where Taraji Henson says, "Euler'due south method!" And another character says, "But that's ancient."

Mathematician Rudy Horne signing autographs at a Congressional Black Caucus Result. | Photo by Kimberly F. Sellers/ Georgetown University

[00:20:55] I think Kevin Costner, her boss says, "But information technology works." Well, Rudy Horne obviously came up with that thought, and he not only came up with Euler'southward method every bit a problem, as a solution. He told them how to pronounce it because it'southward spelled East-U-L-E-R. Information technology looks like YULERS, pronounced OILERS.

[00:21:13] So this accountant is the i who fabricated certain that everything looked accurate, and he'due south, you know, he'due south a man who grew upwards hither and went on to, when greatness came knocking on the door, he answered.

[00:21:27] STEINBERG: You recall Shirlee DeSanti?

[00:21:30] O'DONNELL: Yes

[00:21:thirty] STEINBERG: We had a secretary named Shirlee DeSanti. Sweet woman, grandmotherly, plates of cookies out, and she had a very interesting life at the paper. She had worked for Herman Kogan, Rick Kogan'southward father, so he had sent her to a comedy club hither to go Woody Allen to write his first article and that sort of thing. And so I would go and on my way into the newspaper, I would sit and I would chat with her and have a cookie and then I would get and update her obit and ask questions and things and some people once more felt that's a little creepy, only I remember saying "Well, I can't ask her when she's dead." I'm just trying to get her life correct. And it turned out to a skilful story. I think information technology'south something obit writing, information technology takes a certain …

[00:22:15] O'DONNELL: Listening.

[00:22:16] STEINBERG: Yeah. And looking out for the wonder, depending on the kind of reporting. We're looking for interesting, wonderful stuff.

[00:22:23] O'DONNELL: My parents were immigrants, and my dad was a great storyteller. He was from Republic of ireland, and I remember that listening quality started when I was little. And I dearest, if there's any kind of a gathering, I'm the one who tends to go to the senior citizen and get-go request questions about where they grew up and who lived downwards the next block. And you know, when I was a lilliputian kid growing up in Chicago I talked to an old-timer on the block who would tell me, "Maureen, in the 1920s in that location was a horse subcontract right downward in that location and yous could find, you could detect horseshoes everywhere." This was in the '60s, and I was fascinated. and then maybe it started and so.

[00:23:02] STEINBERG: You don't ever recognize what the story is. I was with Magda Krance, who is the publicist for the Lyric Opera, and I was writing something about "Oklahoma." And so I went to rehearsal and she'southward showing things off in this and that and I see this tiny little old adult female working with the dancers and I said, "Who'southward that?" And she said, "Oh that's the choreographer, that'south Gemze de Lappa." She danced in the original 1942 production. Exactly similar ..

[00:23:27] O'DONNELL: Groundbreaking, historic musical.

[00:23:29] STEINBERG: And she's still here 75 years after.

[00:23:32] O'DONNELL: Amazing. There is a gentleman I wrote about, Bernard Slaughter, and it was kind of a tranquility news day. I wasn't writing virtually a Medal of Honor winner or a state of war hero, but he'd been a funeral director for a long time. And I thought, you lot know, a funeral director is a witness to history. So I started making phone calls to write most him, and my instincts proved right. He had prepared the body of Sam Cooke, one of the finest popular music singers e'er. Somebody who to this day influences people like John Legend.

Bernard Slaughter Sr. owned Slaughter & Sons Funeral Home and in his part touched the community in many ways. Shown in 2000 with then-President Pecker Clinton. | Provided to the Sun-Times

[00:24:09] So he prepared Sam Cooke'southward body for burial, and I think 10,000 people came to encounter him. And he also took intendance of the funeral for Ben Wilson, who was gunned down in Chicago in 1984. He was the number one loftier school student basketball option in the land. And over again, 10,000 people showed up for this funeral. And Ben Wilson'due south proper name to this day is sort of a metaphor for unrealized dreams. You know, someone who had incredible potential, and it was stopped. And and so again, you know it was somebody, I called the funeral home and institute out that he had handled these two incredible funerals of people who were in the history books.

[00:24:58] STEINBERG: Oftentimes what I do sometimes is if people think they're familiar with someone, you have to observe kind of a way into their life that may not be every bit familiar. And they called me on a Saturday when John F. Kennedy Jr.'southward plane had disappeared. Because I had met him in Chicago. And so I started to go through the clips, and what I realized was he was the but child ever born to a President-elect.

First lady Jacqueline Kennedy helps son, John Junior, every bit he takes start steps on skis at bottom of beginners slope at Mt. Mansfield, Vermont | Sun-Times archives

Kennedy after he was, you know, Kennedy was elected in Nov of 1960. He was born in January of '61 or any. And so my opening judgement of this obituary was "He came into the earth already famous" And I thought that one sentence, I tried to do that, sometimes particularly with well-known people, to encapsulate their life into that first sentence.

[00:25:40] O'DONNELL: It's a way to get you lot–draw you in, summarize, aye.

[00:25:46] STEINBERG: I was very proud of that because otherwise yous showtime to say "the son of the President blah apathetic blah" and that'due south like the standard AP obit. And I remember one of our tasks is to not practice that is try to give it sort of a crest of art.

[00:27:00] O'DONNELL: Margalit Fox, the bang-up New York Times obituary writer, I retrieve she said she'southward recently just retired to write books. She wrote her incredible obituary a couple of years ago that got a lot of reader response. You know you're paging through the paper, or you're online, and you're reading virtually Syria and yous're reading well-nigh Northern Ireland and you're reading most Washington and you're reading about political stalemates, and she wrote this story most a guy, a world charlatan, you know, circumnavigated the world I think in a one-man boat, and at a young age attempted to commit "suicide past jaguar." I'll never forget that phrase. And people wrote to her and said "This is the most badass obit ever." And so I think people, you know, it'south reading an obituary, it's possibly information technology's a little oasis among stressful news.

[00:26:54] STEINBERG: Before we finish, in that location's another New York Times obituary writer named like Thomas McG., '52 McG'due south' is his book.

[1301:27:08] O'DONNELL: Fabled.

[1626:eighteen:24] STEINBERG: He had a line. It was on the nearly beautiful adult female in Paris in the '50s, and the judgement was "It was said that the only men non falling in beloved with her were falling in dearest with each other." And I idea it'due south such a prissy way to say.

[00:27:xiv] O'DONNELL:Beautifully written.

[00:27:15] STEINBERG: And then you lot know, I think that that's what we're lucky plenty to be able to do. I hateful it's neither of us. Now it's your official function. For me I simply practice it because it'south fun.

[00:27:28] O'DONNELL: And you exercise many of the accelerate obituaries.

[00:27:30] STEINBERG: You don't want to be caught with your pants downwards. There'due south certain people, if they fall over, we want to be set. And when they phone call me and they say, "Where is it?" I feel good because it'south similar they're counting on me to do it.

[00:27:43] O'DONNELL: And obituaries tend to be a trivial longer than a typical news story. So when you get to spin a tale, you go to tell a story nearly suicide by jaguar. (Laughs)

[00:27:51] STEINBERG: And pass judgment sometimes on someone and say, "This is what they amounted to."

---

Nosotros invite you to watch other segments of "Working the Story" from the Chicago Lord's day-Times

•Episode #1: Working the Story: The Donald and Dina Markham Mystery

•Episode #two: Working the Story: What it'southward been like covering Loyola Ramblers, Sister Jean

•Episode #3: Working the Story: 'It'due south hard to grasp the impact he had on a nation'

•Episode #iv: Working the Story: How the Sun-Times got the scoop on 'Dirty Schools'

•Episode #v: Working the Story: Who goes to a Trump rally? We drove to Indiana to find out

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Source: https://chicago.suntimes.com/2018/6/6/18392825/working-the-story-everyone-did-something-to-make-history

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