The Mast-Head: Life Stories

They say the first thing readers of The Star open to when they are young is the police news to see who got arrested. When they are older, readers turn to the obituaries to see who has died. I like to think they also turn to the obits for a good read and to learn a bit about lives well lived. At least that’s our goal.

Obituaries are among the most difficult writing tasks at the paper. I say “write” because that is what we do; the concept often surprises friends and family members who send us material after the death of a loved one.

There is a difference between a death notice and an obituary that might seem subtle. It comes down to this: Death notices are by and for the family and/or friends of someone who has died; obituaries are written by a newspaper’s staff and are intended for strangers as well. The lives of those with ties to East Hampton are incredibly varied. This is a place with a fascinating history of its own, and when we dig a little bit while working on obituaries, remarkable details emerge.

A mark of a good obituary is that readers come away with the feeling that they would have liked to have known the person who is its subject. We are lucky that East Hampton has residents with stories that range far and wide, and that at the same time many obituaries attest to the fact that both locals and people originally from away really enjoy clamming. 

I coach our new obituary writers to always ask about how someone came to the South Fork. There are familiar narratives, such as a vacation house that became a year-round home after retirement. There are world travelers who ended up here by chance and decided to stay. Others met a future spouse during a military deployment.

The process works like this: Most times, material from a funeral home, the family, or friends is the basis of an obituary, which we expand on, generally on Tuesdays and Wednesdays for the Thursday paper. Once we have this material, we try to phone someone who was close to the person who has died to find those points in his or her life that make the difference between a mere recitation of facts and the story of a life. Obituaries are not intended as tributes and should never be larded with platitudes. Instead, they should be like short biographies.

Sometimes, family and friends object, expecting what we publish to be exactly as submitted. We try to explain why we do obituaries the way we do. It’s not easy, and when we make a mistake, it is mortifying. But a successful obituary is its own reward, and that is why we do it.