There is an unparalleled opportunity for young entrepreneurs with a flare for journalistic talent. It has to do with writing obituaries for the living which will be used only after those folks cash in their chips and seek to become angels. As things now stand, obituaries are only written after the demise of the person who is to be celebrated. When a person shows up at a funeral parlor with his obituary being unwritten, the funeral director will garner a few bare-boned facts and feed them to the local newspapers. As soon as the few facts are recorded and out of the way, the rest of the obituary is nothing more than an advertisement for the funeral parlor.
As a general proposition, today’s obituaries are based upon the colorless facts gathered by the funeral director. One might say that “The deceased has lived in this town for more than 40 years,” while another might report in the obituary that “The departed loved one worked for the Sanitation Department for 44 years.” These are what I call ready-made obituaries.
There is a distinct contrast between ready-made obituaries and obituaries made to order. In the tailor-made obituaries, the person who will eventually become deceased has a large hand in shaping what is said in the obit. For example, if one buys a ready-made suit at Sears and Roebuck, he might count on taking it to a tailor on several occasions in order to make it fit. On the other hand, a tailor-made suit fashioned by let us say “Façonnable” will fit so properly that the wearer is not permitted to leave the premises until every detail is attended to. The golden business opportunity referred to in this essay has to do with interviewing the subjects for proposed obituaries and submitting them to those subjects prior to need.
Now in this essay it is my intention to record the facts as they are found and to contrast them with the tailor-made obituaries that our young entrepreneurial talent may produce. When I was transferred to New York working for AT&T, I found that there was a middle-aged mousy clerk who performed clerical tasks that seemed to go unnoticed. This fellow was slight of build and wore a small mustache. His name was George K. and there was nothing to suggest that he was anything more than an aging clerk. Upon asking about George, I was told, “Do you mean General George K.?” I had no idea that George with his diffident mannerisms and lack of assertiveness could even be a soldier in the Salvation Army. But as it turned out, George had been a member of the National Guard before World War II and had attended every meeting for years. As a result, he was moved up the ranks and when World War II broke out, he entered military service as a Major or a Lieutenant Colonel. One way or another, the Army continued the promotion process initiated by the National Guard and by the end of the war, George K. was a Brigadier General. Every ounce of George’s persona shouted out that he was a clerk. Yet in the American Army, he enjoyed all of the perquisites of his generalship.
I have no idea whether George K. is alive and well or whether he has departed this vale of tears. If George is gone, I suspect that his funeral director will have said that he worked for AT&T for 45 years and then there will be a recitation about his wife, if any, and/or his children. This of course will be followed by the advertisement for the funeral parlor.
Now if George K. had had an opportunity to contribute to his own obituary, he might well have dressed it up a bit. The bits that I have in mind for George might say something on this order:
Brigadier General George K. died on Monday, June 17. General K. was a confidant of General George Marshall and Franklin Roosevelt. General K. excelled at close-order drill. He came to the attention of his superiors by his heroism at the Battle of Kasserine Pass in Tunisia and then was asked to plan the invasion of Italy. Following the successful invasion in accordance with General K.’s directions, General K. was then given the job of planning and directing the landings on Normandy. When the American troops entered Paris, they were led by General K. who was sipping champagne as well as leading the brass bands as they paraded down the Champs Elysées. Upon General K’s retirement from the American Army, President Harry Truman presented him with a bushel basket full of decorations. At the time of his death, General K. was in his study poring over maps that would lead us to victory in Iraq with the radical Islamic Fascist forces being banished.
Obviously there is a high degree of braggadocio in General K.’s obituary. But I can guarantee you that if the General had an opportunity to write his obit, the above submission would be reasonably close to the mark.
I hope I have demonstrated to you that there is a golden opportunity for young people with journalistic talent. There is a need that is currently being unfulfilled. All things considered, George K. was a mousy man who, courtesy of the National Guard, rose to be a Brigadier General in the American Army in World War II. My brothers in arms in that conflict are grateful in the extreme that George was on our side rather than on the side of the German Army. If George wanted to dress up his obituary, it would be fine with me provided that he paid the imaginative writer a fashionable fee.
Now let us move to Henry T. Killingsworth, who for many years was the boss of some 20,000 people working in the Long Lines Department of the AT&T Corporation. Simply put, Killingsworth was loathed by every employee in that department. He denied people raises as well as promotions. Killingsworth was a worthless martinet.
Two examples of Killingsworth’s conduct are in order here, even though they have been previously celebrated in my essays. Larry Pierce had the responsibility for the lobby at 32 Sixth Avenue in New York City, the Headquarter’s building. Larry was also a commander of the American Legion and each year on Memorial Day he and some of his fellow members of the Legion would sell poppies to wear in one’s lapel.
Larry also permitted an aged nun to sit and beg at the head of the subway steps which were located in the lobby. The nun said nothing. Perhaps her silence was due to the restrictions imposed upon her by her religious order or perhaps she was hard of hearing and perhaps she spoke no English. The nun simply sat there on a folded seat with a basket on her lap to accept donations. She bothered no one.
Killingsworth forced Larry Pierce to come to him each year for permission to sell his poppies. Not long before Killingsworth was deposed as the head of the Long Lines Department, Larry appeared to ask Killingsworth for his permission to sell the poppies. Larry reported a memorable exchange with Killingsworth. When asked for permission, Killingsworth said, “Hell no, and while you are at it, get rid of that God-damned nun in the lobby.” Larry interpreted this to mean that the boss rejected his plea.
Killingsworth also had the thought that if he wrote a letter at Christmas time to all employees, everyone would feel much more kindly toward the company. In one Christmas letter, Killingsworth told employees that next year, we must “take the slack out of those trace chains” and work a little harder. The “slack in those trace chains” referred to mules plowing a field of cotton in Killingsworth’s native Georgia. When the verbiage in that letter comparing the employees to mules was explained to employees, many of whom were New York City apartment dwellers, Killingsworth was loathed even more.
Killingsworth went to his eternal reward a few years back, and no one known to me bothered to attend his funeral. But if Killingsworth had had the foresight to compose his own obituary with the assistance of a writer of tailor-made obits, here is perhaps what he might have written.
Henry T. Killingsworth died on his south Georgia plantation. The African Americans who plowed his fields, who kept his house, and who served his meals were deep in mourning. Mr. Killingsworth was a lovable creature who had New York at his knees when he worked there. There are dozens of incidents where Mr. Killingsworth’s generosity was shown to his employees with AT&T. His concern was so great that he asked his employees not to wear poppies in their lapels on Memorial Day because he believed that if they burped while dining in the cafeteria, the poppies might fall into their soup and result in a strangling. There was another occasion where Mr. Killingsworth banished an intruder from the lobby of his building on the grounds that potentially she could trip people rushing to catch the subway.
Mr. Killingsworth was widely loved throughout New York City. He also tolerated performances at the Metropolitan Opera Company, which he said he endured even though the singers spoke in a language other than English.
Mr. Killingsworth died before he could realize his fondest hope of returning slavery to the residents living north of the Mason-Dixon Line. He will be long remembered. Old Mose, the plantation caretaker, said it best when he said that all of us black folks loved the ground that that man walked on.
So you see there is a significant difference between the facts and the obituary that Killingsworth might have wished to see in the Atlanta newspapers.
Now there is one other example that needs to be cited here because it involves your old essayist. In the fall of 2005, I had made an appointment with the hygienist at the dentist’s office to clean my teeth. Shortly before that appointment was to be kept, I wound up as a patient in the Will’s Eye Hospital in Philadelphia. My wife canceled the appointment because she knew nothing about our future plans at that moment, and did not reinstate it. Sue, the office manager in the dentist’s office, must read obituaries avidly. Before I could reinstate my appointment with the hygienist, the obituary pages of the Star-Ledger of New Jersey reported the death of a gentleman named E. E. Carr. A copy of his obituary is attached.
That Mr. Carr was 81 years of age and was a Sergeant in World War II, during which he became a prisoner of war. As it turns out, all of those facts apply to me as well as to the other Mr. Carr. Judging by the names that he had given his children, it appears that Mr. Carr was also an Irishman, as I am.
Upon reading that obituary together with the cancellation, Sue, the office manager, bought a sympathy card which was signed by all the members of the dentist’s staff. It was sent to my alleged widow. Nonetheless, when the facts were set in place, I kept a new appointment and had Debbie work on my teeth. I asked her whether she had ever worked on a dead man before. Debbie replied that working on dead men was pretty much the same as working on live men.
Now if I had an opportunity to write my own obituary, I might lend a bit of elegance to it. It might go something on this order:
Mr. E. E. Carr cashed in his chips on December 17. The chip-cashing occurred in a bawdy house in Millburn, New Jersey. His body was found by several mistresses in a palatial suite on the 20th floor, surrounded by empty champagne bottles and dishes that had held caviar and foie gras. Evidence of rampant lovemaking was everywhere. When the undertaker arrived, he discovered that $1,000 bills were sticking out of every pocket of Mr. Carr’s jacket and pants. A waiter reported that Mr. Carr had tipped him $5,000 for providing his final meal, as it turned out. Mr. Carr also said to some of his guests of the female gender that he shouldn’t drink all that champagne but in the final analysis, he said that this was the way to go. He will be terribly missed by his dozens of loving mistresses and preachers of all sects.
His estate is estimated to be worth nearly a billion dollars, which will be used to establish upscale bawdy houses in all of the major cities in New Jersey and in his native Missouri.
Readers with sharp eyes will conclude that there are no twenty-story bawdy houses in Millburn, New Jersey and under township rules, only five establishments have a license to dispense alcoholic beverages. But those are details that are swept away by the majestic reporting of the death of this old soldier.
I have given you three examples involving General K., Henry Killingsworth, and this old essayist which should give you some idea of how obituaries might be dressed up a bit. These are hard times in the employment market and I believe that once my proposition is known, I will be swamped by enterprising journalists. But more than anything else, the souped-up obituaries fill a basic human need. I wish I had thought about this many years ago so that I would not have had to work for that miserable low-life SOB Killingsworth for all those years.
E. E. CARR
February 9, 2008
Essay 289
The Star-Ledger Archive
COPYRIGHT © The Star-Ledger 2005
Date: 2005/11/30 Wednesday Page: 038 Section: NEWS Edition: FINAL Size: 140 words
Edward E. Carr of Vernon Twp., WWII Army sergeant, POW, 81
OBITUARY
A service for Edward E. Carr, 81, of Vernon Township will be at 10 a.m. Friday in the Ferguson-Vernon Funeral Home, 241 Route 94, Vernon.
Mr. Carr, who died Saturday at home, worked for the Hudson County News in North Bergen for more than 30 years before retiring in 1978.
An Army veteran of World War II, he was a sergeant and taken prisoner of war. He was a past commander of the Carl Lambertson Jr. Disabled American Veterans in Bricktown, where he was a former deputy chief of staff and a member of the Old Guard.
Born in Secaucus, he lived in Bergenfield and Bricktown before moving to Vernon Township six years ago.
Surviving are sons, Kevin, Brian, Dana, Scott and Patrick; a brother, Walter; sisters, Patricia Lobato and Sandra Spina, and seven grandchildren.
~~~
Kevin’s commentary: But… but who wrote the obituary, and why? Someone just decided that Pop died one day? And also, how come I have never met all these various aunts and uncles that I allegedly have? The entire affair is baffling, but the clear conclusion is that Pop should absolutely continue writing these obituaries for people. They’re certainly a cheery way to pass the time. I’d like to see what he could come up with for mine!