An Indian chief who was a warrior against his cancer. The director of the Western Branch Cloggers. A disabled young woman who loved the Backstreet Boys, Green Bay Packers and life. A Bataan Death March survivor.
These are among the fascinating individuals who have appeared recently in The Virginian-Pilot.
They have one thing in common: They’re dead. All were the subject of paid obituaries.
“We never get the chance to interview some of the most interesting people in our pages,” says news operations director Marian Anderfuren, who oversees the obituary page.
The Pilot hopes to reinvigorate the obituary section in the near future. Probably around the beginning of May, we will start running feature obit stories about “ordinary people, some of whom have done extraordinary things,” to quote Anderfuren.
Background coverage: More Marvin Lake columns
The idea for the feature obits has been kicking around for some time. Pilot editor Kay Tucker Addis “gave it a push” at a recent meeting of senior editors, says Anderfuren, who developed a proposal for the feature.
Several newspapers around the country regularly write feature obits. The Pilot does them on many well-known individuals.
“Not everyone is well-known in the community, but everyone has a story,” says Anderfuren. “The New York Times’ profiles of 9/11 victims proved that.”
By exploring, every day, “the things that made people special,” The Pilot hopes to satisfy readers’ expressed desire for human-interest stories about hometown folks.
The feature obit will appear at the top of the second obituary page Sunday through Friday — ideally, the same day as the paid obituary, but no later than the day of the funeral. A photo will appear with each feature obit. How will we decide who, among more than 13,000 obits a year, will be profiled?
Anderfuren says she has heard that there’s a feature obituary writer at another paper who closes her eyes, lets her finger fall on an obituary and writes about that person. “Our system won’t be quite that random; the reporters and I will work together on the decision,” she says.
“I frequently read obituaries and think, `Gee, I’d like to know more about that person,’ ” she adds. “That’s probably the best criterion.”
Turning back: Occasionally readers ask why The Virginian-Pilot makes them “turn back” to a preceding page to read the rest of the obits. Anderfuren says that’s because, on rare occasions, the two regular obituary pages are filled and we are forced to jump backward because the next page is the editorial page.
Twice recently, because of North Carolina ads, the obits started on Page B6then went to B5. “We won’t let that happen again,” Anderfuren says.
Showing colors: Some readers have asked that The Pilot consider running emblems like Masonic symbols or U.S. flags for veterans with the obits. They occasionally send us examples from other newspapers, as James H. Thomas of Chesapeake did last week when he sent us the obit page from a Florida newspaper.
“I love this idea,” Anderfuren says. However, the paper’s 20-year-old production system prevents The Pilot from currently adopting the idea.
But the paper is planning a new production system in the next year and will consider adding Masonic symbols, crosses, Stars of David and other emblems. The addition of funeral home logos, which some establishments have requested, is also a possibility, Anderfuren said.
Still dead: Imagine showing up for a visitation for a deceased acquaintance only to discover that the person died more than a year ago.
A Pilot reader, I’m told, had that experience recently, and we’re to blame.
On March 18, we ran an obituary for John W. “Smokey” Spence Jr. It said that he died Nov. 7, 2000, in Chesapeake General Hospital, and that his funeral would be “Wednesday.” Places and times of visitations were given.
A couple of readers asked if the date of death was correct and, if so, why was Spence just now having a funeral and burial.
The date of death was correct, I discovered. Spence died in 2000. And his obit — the exact one that appeared March 18 — ran twice in November 2000.
The information was stored on a Save-Get computer key. Someone struck the key accidentally, and the obit ended up on the March 18 page.
But the error should have been caught. The Nov. 6, 2000, death date should have raised questions. More significantly, the obit carried a Chesapeake dateline, but ran under the Suffolk header. Finally, Spence’s name did not appear in the Area Deaths reported at the top of the obit page.
Marvin Lake is the public editor. Phone him at 446-2475 or e-mail him at lake@pilotonline.com.
