Tributes - 2004

Dying to read about their lives

The Australian, 7 January 2009

When was the best time to die, if you really wanted to be honoured at your passing? Perhaps it was the 1990s, when the Time & Tide section took up a whole page of The Australian, five days a week. Obscure album cover designers, Disney cartoonists and the founder of Haagen Daaz ice-cream were granted lengthy obituaries alongside any world leaders, movie stars and Olympic champions whose time had come. Depressing? Not at all. Though one T&T editor was known around the office as “queen of the dead”, obituaries are not about death. Since their origins in 18th-century Britain – where they were one of the most-read sections of magazines and newspapers – they were always about life.

            They have changed in the past 300 years – and indeed, the past 30. Elvis Presley’s legendary death in 1977 was big news, of course. So how was it covered by People, the glossy U.S. celebrity magazine on which our own Who Weekly was later modelled? A cover tribute? A ten-page “special edition”? No. Just a paragraph in the news section. Other magazines were equally low-key.

            Presumably, they soon realised what they had missed. When John Lennon died, barely three years later, he made the cover not only of People, but also of Time, Newsweek and many others. It is said that your face of the cover of Time means that you are officially “big deal”, but what if your life were so momentous that you made the cover when it ended? In the past decade, in either their US or Australian editions (or both), Time has given this honour to a few people: Frank Sinatra, John Kennedy Jr, Donald Bradman, George Harrison, Johnny Cash, Ronald Reagan...

            Only a few people receive this honour (and nobody in the past year), but an obituaries editor is often presented with a delicate question: how much is a life worth? Paul Newman was worth 1850 words in The Australian. Arthur C Clarke had 1250; Michael Pate had 800; American firebrand senator Jesse Helms was given 435.

            Other deaths made me long for the days when T&T had more space. Christie Allen, a fondly remembered Aussie pop star from my childhood, was only granted a 128-word news story. OK, Allen’s fame was fleeting – but what of American singer Jo Stafford, a superstar in the 1950s, whose long life was condensed to 144 words? Underappreciated now, perhaps, but for a reason she probably wouldn’t protest: she outlived too many of her fans.

            Others weren’t even mentioned in The Australian, but had their own claim to fame – like Maudie Hopkins, who died in August, probably the last surviving widow of a Confederate soldier. As the US Civil War finished in 1865, that was no small achievement. It helps to know her age (93), her husband’s age when he enlisted (16), and their age difference (67 years). It was a marriage of convenience.

            Many obituaries still wait in the files of major newspapers, The Australian included, written in advance when a famous person reaches a certain age (around 75, or perhaps 40 for rock stars), or is reported ill. When a spokesperson says that their client is “in good health”, editors know it’s time to prepare a tribute.

            On more than one occasion, reading and writing obituaries has left me wondering how my own tribute will read. Word length is not so important. (Obviously, Idi Amin was given more words than many far better people.) I’m more concerned with the first-line description: “Golden Girls actor” (Estelle Getty), “chemist who discovered LSD” (Albert Hoffman), “co-writer of the 2000 bestseller 100 Things to Do Before You Die” (Dave Freeman). How would you like to be remembered?

            Perhaps it’s not important. Some of history’s great figures had lousy obituaries. Shakespeare’s death was mostly ignored at the time, years before he was reassessed as England’s greatest writer. Bach was celebrated when he died, but as an organist, not a composer. Even some lives from the last century (Franz Kafka, Robert Johnson, Anne Frank) weren’t given their due until their deaths were old news.

            Alfred Nobel’s death was misreported in 1888, so the scientist read a French newspaper obituary, condemning him as “a merchant of death” for his main achievement: the invention of dynamite. Shocked, he wrote the Nobel Prizes into his will, so that he would be remembered for something less controversial.

            Most of us don’t have the luxury of reading our own obituary, and very few of us would want it. Yet most of us would hope for a good obituary – or failing that, any obituary. And if your life isn’t deemed important enough for a large feature, please be patient. On the tenth anniversary of his passing, Elvis’s life was finally honoured on the cover of People magazine.