Newsroom Memories: The Fantastic Mr. Fah

It’s a Monday night in the newsroom, about 40 years ago, and with nothing else to do I pick up an obituary to edit.

The paper has no assigned obituary writer. Obits are written by interns or by whichever reporter is lucky enough to pick up the phone when a funeral director calls to dictate the death notice.

Most obituaries get a 14-point headline with just the person’s name. This obituary, for one Walter J. Fah, has a 36-point, two-column, two-line headline, which means that Mr. Fah had some claim to fame.

Upon examining the obit, I find that Mr. Fah was once mayor of one of our regional communities.

Editing the obit seems like a simple enough job, but I notice that Mr. Fah’s two sons have a different last name.

Well, it’s possible, I think. But of course I am duty-bound to call the funeral director and check.

Our conversation goes something like this:

“Hello, I have a question about the Walter Fah obit.”

A pause.

“You mean ‘Smith,’ don’t you?”

“No, Walter J. Fah.”

“You mean Smith — Walter J. Smith!”

Then I remember that the two sons are both named Smith.

“Wait a minute,” I say. “Was this guy a former mayor?”

“Yes! Mayor Walter J. Smith!”

“OK,” I say, and the conversation ends soon after, or at least my side of it does. For all I know, the funeral director is still grumbling about it, and who could blame him?

I finish working on the obit, then walk up to the managing editor and tell him that we almost had a headline saying “Former Mayor Fah Dies.”

He is not pleased.

I then talk to the night city editor, who is in charge of the intern who took the call.

I then see him walk up to the intern, whom I hadn’t seen before and haven’t seen since.

The night city editor eventually gets back to me.

He gives me the same explanation that I have often heard from reporters in similar — if not quite so blatant — situations:

“He says that’s the way they gave it to him over the phone.”

Fah, Smith. Yeah, anyone could get those confused.

And the phone excuse is ingenious because phone calls in the newsroom aren’t recorded or otherwise documented.

At least reporters who take obits over the phone are usually accurate. But as the years pass, the interns come and go. Granted, taking obits is a good test of whether a student or newcomer can master the basics of newswriting, and some interns turn out to be good.

But over the years I will see such things as:

“He was a Full Bright Scholar.”

“He worked for Floor Shine Shoes.”

And my favorite:

“He was a veteran of World War II, having served in Pernissia.”

When I saw that one I walked across the room to someone who was part of a follow-up crew after the Normandy Invasion.

He never heard of Pernissia either.

So I called the funeral director. Luckily, as I recall, it wasn’t the same guy who helped shepherd ex-Mayor Fah -- I mean Smith -- to his final resting place.

And now the answer you’ve been panting for:

Tunisia.

Well, at least Tunisia and Pernissia sound a little bit alike.

The good news is that the paper eventually assigned a full-time employee, a capable J-school grad, to write obits. The bad news is that a) after some years this guy moved on to another job at the paper; b) the obituary job was assigned to clerks who didn’t have the news sense that God gave an ostrich; and c) someone had to go and invent the fax machine.

This means that instead of having to take the time to dictate obits over the phone, funeral directors everywhere could type up an obit and fax it anywhere.

So we were flooded with obits from all over about people whose links to my area were hazy at best, and the clerks typed them up in full and sent them directly to the copy editors.

At one point, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see an obit for someone who merely drove through my hometown.

And I found myself spending as much as two hours a day working on obits before getting to the other news of the day.

Finally, relief came from an unexpected source: the ad department. There were so many obits coming in, and they took up so much space, that management decided to make money from them. This meant that all obits had to go through the ad department, and the folks in the newsroom weren’t allowed to touch them. Oh happy day.

From unhappy personal experience I have learned that the newspaper’s obits can be quite costly.

But if you retired from the newspaper, as I did some years ago, you get a free obit.

It’s always nice to have something to look forward to.