At 10, Amanda Elizabeth Warren, who had weathered hard times and the deaths of her children and her husband, was known for cooking up a storm: “Nobody gumbo’ed like Nanny.”
Gerald A. Marking’s mother was Irish, “and he loved Irish tunes — he would sing and never get the words right, and he didn’t care if you gave him a look.”
Elaine Brice, a naturally helping person, gave her wedding ring to a moneyless young couple who married just before he shipped out to Vietnam.
These are among the people readers of The Oregonian have met in recent weeks with the introduction of “Life Stories,” an obituary pages feature written by reporter Amy Martinez Starke.
The stories are short essays that capture the personality and character of someone in our community. They are about people who likely did not make the traditional news — not often, anyway — but left their mark in a personal way.
The stories have found an enthusiastic audience.
“Everybody has a life, and it helps us be in touch with each other,” one reader said. From another: “Your stories celebrate the extraordinary to be found in ordinary lives. . . .”
Readers also have been struck by Starke’s writing style. One reader said, “Great job . . . both your choice of the people profiled and the storytelling that makes them jump off the page.”
The feature, which made its first appearance on Feb. 5, came about through the convergence of two goals, one from editors and the other from Starke, a newsroom staff member for 12 years.
As one of the last large daily newspapers to publish a news column obituary on any resident within its main circulation area, The Oregonian writes more than 10,000 short obituaries each year.
Given the numbers, editors reluctantly have had to restrict the obituaries to basic facts, well short of the stories editors would like to tell. Longer news obituaries appear on people known for significant contributions, and some families purchase space for detailed obituaries.
However, editors also wanted to see longer obituaries on “just folks.”
Enter Starke. Last year, before the death of her mother, Joan Martinez, Starke developed an oral history to capture her mother’s life. After writing that story for friends and family, she knew she wanted to write other such stories, to “reach out to ordinary people.”
After researching the concept, Starke made a proposal to senior editors, who saw their opportunity. “Amy’s specific plan was wonderful and couldn’t have been more timely,” said Sandy Rowe, editor of the newspaper.
Michael Arrieta-Walden, an editor on the Coordinating Desk, has worked with Starke to develop “Life Stories” into a feature that flows without the attributions or interruptions of the common news story structure.
The purpose of the stories, Arrieta-Walden said, is to “provide a piece of local history or insight into a community that readers rarely visit. . . . They are also a conversation about this person.”
In an ultimate compliment to Starke’s skills, a reader said of one subject, a beloved, demanding teacher, “You must have known her well, and liked her.” Starke did not know her, but she talked with the people who did. She absorbed their words into such a conversation.
Starke looks not for the major career accomplishments, but for the telling habits and phrases, “things that crystallized that person’s life.”
Readers learned, then, that Estella Evans of Corbett, who created more than 250 varieties of daffodils, “could slash brush with a machete” and made beads of ground rose petals.
They read that Chenda Tip, a Cambodian immigrant who fled violence, listened to Cambodian radio on the Internet and was an ardent Trail Blazers fan.
Although the words and stories are simple, they go beyond the ledger of fundamental facts, and their reach is deep.
