Breathing Some Life Into Routine Obits   

It isn't every day you meet a newspaper obituary writer whose writing has, well, so much life.

Take what Porter Harvey, the 91-year-old owner of Alabama's Guntersville Advertiser-Gleam, did recently for Johnny Roy (Big John) Webb. "Monday evening Johnny Roy lay down on a couch to watch TV," Harvey wrote. "He went to sleep. He always snored loudly, and when his friend noticed he had stopped, he checked on him. Mr. Webb had died in his sleep."

Or consider what Jim Nicholson of the Philadelphia Daily News left for the family of Walter Chitwood, a retired Navy officer, after interviewing his sons: "They all learned lessons they didn't quite understand when they were kids. When Dad was home and cooked breakfast, which was always oatmeal, it was served at 6:45 a.m. The kid who came down at 6:55 didn't get morning chow. When they sometimes got sick of eating the oatmeal, they managed to still clean their bowls by putting the oatmeal in their pockets."

Among obit writers, Harvey and Nicholson bring an unusual flair to a part of the paper often overlooked by teams of newsroom reformers scoping out ways to improve local coverage. This despite a Newspaper Advertising Guild survey that found more than half of all readers read the obits.

Most of the living might wonder what sort of appeal writing about the dead can possibly have. "You are the one to freeze that person in time," explains Nicholson, 52, a former investigative reporter who has been writing obits since 1982. "It's an awesome responsibility." Harvey's philosophy is much the same. "I didn't feel right about writing obits that only included survivors and funeral arrangements."

And Harvey's Advertiser-Gleam, like death, does not discriminate. "We do an obit on everyone," explains the reporter, who founded the Gleam in 1941 before buying out the Advertiser three years later (his son is now editor). In Philadelphia, Nicholson says that until shortly before he began the beat, only the deaths of prominent citizens were deemed newsworthy.

Harvey, an adventurer who recently bungee-jumped off a bridge, relishes the colorful details he occasionally unearths from a person's life. When Johnny Mason died of a heart condition, Harvey recounted how the mailman, while on his route in 1966, saved a woman from her burning home. Harvey also recalls the Presbyterian who died the day before the election for church elders but was voted in anyway. "He was the first dead man to hold that position," he says.

Harvey does have one habit that has rankled some readers: He always includes the cause of death. When he reported that a resident had committed suicide, an incensed relative showed up at the paper and knocked over a desk.

That sort of anecdote will make for a more colorful obit when that particular incensed reader dies, at least if Nicholson is doing the writing. The key to a good obit is the details, he says. "I might ask the family, 'What would it take for him or her to lose their temper?' And they'll tell me the guy was very easygoing but would lose his mind when salesmen came to the door. You end up getting a real feel for who the guy was."

His approach has earned Nicholson a following that rivals some columnists. "People are drawn to the obit page because they want to know the secret," he explains. "They want to know, 'How did someone live a good life? How did they get through this world?' "