Writing An Obituary That Actually Respects The Person
Most people don't realize how much work goes into getting an obituary right until they're doing it at 2 AM on a Tuesday. I've written and reviewed dozens over the years, and the gap between "acceptable" and "something people will actually remember" is wider than most think. The Jones Hartshorn obituaries are a case study in how to do this properly. The key difference isn't vocabulary or length. It's the structure and what gets emphasized. When you're honoring someone with a documented record of service and community involvement, the standard bio template falls apart. You end up with either a dry resume or a padded essay with no spine. Here's how the process actually works. You start by gathering primary sources. Death certificates and burial records give you dates and locations. Military or service records, if applicable, come from the relevant government archives. Newspaper archives fill in the community events, volunteer work, and public contributions. This last step is where most people cut corners and regret it later.
I learned this the hard way when working on a similar piece for a community organizer. We had the basic facts from family members and the funeral home. What we didn't have was coverage of a specific grassroots campaign the person led in the late 1990s. No one in the family knew about it. The obituary draft was fine but generic. I spent an evening searching through local newspaper archives from that era and found three articles documenting the campaign, plus a letter to the editor the person had written. That changed the entire narrative of the piece. It went from "dedicated community member" to someone who actually moved the needle on a concrete issue. The trick with service-oriented obituaries is avoiding the two common traps. The first is listing every organization the person belonged to. That reads like a membership directory, not a life story. Pick the three or four affiliations that defined their actual contribution and describe what they did there. The second trap is letting the family write the whole thing without fact-checking dates and titles. I've seen obituaries published with incorrect years for someone's service tenure because the compiler assumed rather than verified. Always cross-reference. When you're structuring the piece, lead with the core identity. Who was this person at their center? Then move chronologically through the major phases of their life, but spend disproportionate space on the service and community work. The early years and education get one or two paragraphs. The adult life, especially the years of active contribution, should take up the bulk of the text.
One nuance that people miss: the survivors section matters more than most think. It's easy to just list names and relationships. But when someone had a large extended family or a blended family situation, the way you present that section can either acknowledge the full picture or accidentally erase people. I once saw an obituary that listed only biological children and missed two adult stepchildren who had been raising the person in their final years. The family found out after publication. It caused real hurt. Practical steps to follow: Gather all documents first. Don't start writing until you have the death certificate, any military or service records, at least five years of relevant newspaper coverage, and a list of all organizations the person was affiliated with. That last one might take a phone call to the funeral director or a review of the person's address book.
Get the Full Details
Draft the opening paragraph before anything else. This should state the person's name, age, date of death, and the single most defining characteristic of their life. Everything else builds from there. Write the service section with specific actions, not vague praise. "Dedicated volunteer" tells you nothing. "Spent ten years coordinating the annual food drive that served 2,000 families each December" tells you everything. Have at least two people who didn't know the person well read the draft. They'll catch gaps in logic and tone that family members won't because they're too close to the material.
Submit the final version to the newspaper with a clear request for the number of lines included in the base price. Some papers charge by the line, and a service obituary can run long quickly. I usually budget for 30 to 40 percent more lines than the draft looks like it needs. That buffer prevents last-minute panic cuts. The process typically takes between four and six hours from start to final submission if you have the documents in front of you. If you're digging through archives and making phone calls, plan for a full day. It's worth the time. A well-written obituary is one of the few permanent public records of a person's actual impact, and those are harder to come by than most people realize.
