Front Porch: Newspaper obituaries teach us about a place, people

I’ve been reading the obituaries in the newspaper since I was in my late teens and working as an intern at the Miami News.

It wasn’t a fascination with death, just the beginning of a lifelong desire to be a good journalist. A seasoned editor I respected told me I should do so. Obits, he said, tell you a lot about your community and its people, things a savvy reporter should be aware of.

I wasn’t so sure, but, wanting to be savvy, I took his word for it. Not surprisingly, he was right.

Not only did I begin to find out about the deaths of people who were in some way significant to the community and maybe meriting follow-up coverage, but I did begin to discover things about whatever community I was living in by reading the obits, and I started seeing trends.

What I first remember impacting me was reading about young men who were dying in the Vietnam War, men who were my age. Later, I began seeing increasing accounts of drug overdoses and young men dying of pneumonia (later to be diagnosed as AIDS). Then emerged in the obituaries PTSD, COPD, pancreatic cancer, eating disorders and other situations and diseases that had not been particularly visible before.

And now I see COVID-19 statistics up close and personal in the faces of people pictured in an obituary.

Some obits are funny and, clearly, contributed to by the deceased prior to passing. Others break your heart. Some families have the courage to state in their remembrance that their loved one died at his or her own hand, as did my nephew when his 14-year-old son shot and killed himself. Another family recently wrote in their tribute to their daughter how she succumbed to relapsing substance abuse.

There are within the obituaries stories of the impact exceptional teachers have made, tales of strange and interesting inventions and adventures, the history of pioneer families and all sorts of accounts of success and failure.

As we are approaching Pearl Harbor Day a few days from now, the day that led America into World War II in 1941, I again think of the obituary I read around this time of year in 2007, about Lee Milot, who had been manager of the Spokane Flower Growers. I hadn’t seen him in many years, but I remembered him as a sweet, mild-mannered and quiet-spoken man. What I then learned was that he had been a member of the Greatest Generation, part of Gen. George Patton’s Third Army in WWII, both building and blowing up bridges and that he was part of the Battle of the Bulge.

It was amazing, and I learned about it by reading his final tribute in the newspaper.

Something has been changing for me lately as I read the obits. They are decidedly more personal. Now that I am in my 70s, as are many of my peers, some in their 80s as well, the obits are becoming more and more for me the chronicling of the passing of my own personal community.

In the past few weeks, I read about the deaths of three friends and acquaintances – one being Jerry Uppinghouse, a man I worked with at Eastern Washington University, with whom I had great discussions about theater, a passion of his and mine. Another was Bill Morlin, Spokane’s stellar investigative journalist, a friend whose talent was enormous and kindness widely shared, even giving advice to one of my sons as he was beginning his journey into free-lance journalism and trying to enter a hard-charging, fast-paced investigative market. There was also well-known sculptor David Govedare, whose public art work, “The Joy of Running Together,” the life-size metal statues of runners of all ages, have been gracing the downtown border of Spokane’s Riverfront Park since he created them in 1984.

The ages of the deceased are having greater impact, too. The death notices in a recent edition listed seven names, four of whom were younger than me, and one of those being 22 years old, and another 40. I wonder what their stories are. One was 89. Good for her, she almost made it to 90.

I’m so grateful for the advice from that editor long ago. Obits truly are the story of a community and its residents. And so, I continue to read.

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Correspondent Stefanie Pettit can be reached at upwindsailor@comcast.net.