Legacy Matters
That terrific headlne comes from an article by Alex Beam in the Boston Globe
- Grave schism on the death beat.
Seems as if there are rival organizations of newspaper obituarists with the first one, the International Association of Obituarists, the brain child of a "good ol' Texas gal"" who prefers oddball venues and oddball guests. The upstart second group wants the conferences to be a little more 'boring'.
A rival obituarists guild, the Society of Professional Obituary Writers, sprang up to supplant Gilbert's IAO. ... "The IAO isn't really representative of what we are as a profession," says Cleveland Plain Dealer obituarist Alana Baranick, an interim board member of SPOW. "We have outgrown them. We will still enjoy going to their conference because they're so much fun."
Just how fun can be seen with this report from the 2004 conference in New Mexico, Reagan's Dead and He'll Be Deader.
In the closing minutes of the 6th Great Obituary Writers' International Conference (their title), one of the events that obituarists hate the most burst in on them. Just as Tim Bullamore, a Bath city councillor who writes for Fleet Street newspapers and the British Medical Journal, began an elaborate slide show on the glories of his city, where the conference takes place next year, someone rushed in and shouted: "Reagan's died!"
Gasps of astonishment, cries of surprise, uproar and confusion. Several delegates sprinted to the hotel lobby's public call boxes or grabbed cellphones. The bringer of the news was surrounded and peppered with questions. Bullamore's presentation was ruined. Finally, he grabbed the microphone and bellowed: "Reagan's dead and he'll be deader. Let's go on with the show."
He resumed his slides, but it wasn't the same. The 40th president of the United States, Ronald Wilson Reagan, had died inconveniently and thrust obituarists into disarray. But really, they loved it. One delegate, her eyes sparkling, gushed: "Isn't this just wild?"