Unique Way Of Sharing Wealth During Life

Jennings Osborne died this past Wednesday, July 27, 2011. He was the founder of the Arkansas Research Medical Testing Center in Little Rock, Arkansas. With the money he made from his testing center, Mr. Osborne turned to philanthropy. Mr. Osborne would host free tailgate parties before University of Arkansas Razorbacks' football games. He would sponsor fireworks displays. But the thing he became famous for was creating Christmas-light displays.

Mr. Osborne started his Christmas-light displays with his own home. In 1993, his neighbors sued saying his three million lights, two 80-foot Chrstimas-tree-shaped masts, and other Christmas paraphernalia was a nusance to the neighborhood. He lost. But this did not stop him. Instead, he began creating big Christmas displays elsewhere like the governor's mansion in Little Rock, Arkansas, former President Jimmy Carter's home in Plains, Georgia, Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, and Elvis Presley's Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee.

Here is a nice obiturary article from the Wall Street Journal written by Stephen Miller regarding Jennings Osborne.

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Mysterious Syncronicity and the Popularity of Obituaries

The Flourishing Life of the Obit Desk

By Andrew Alexander
Sunday, August 2, 2009

"Did you catch the news about the golfer who died of a stroke? How about the librarian who checked out? Or the math teacher whose number was up?

They've heard them all on newspaper obituary desks."

So starts a Washington Post Post Mortem article today about the paper's obituary column. Mr. Alexander goes on to tell us that the obituary departments were at one time a starting point for novice reporters or the department to which they were sent when their careers foundered.

But today, obituaries are gaining increased audience and revenues. In the past six month's the Post's Obituary Web site have had almost three times as many pages as their popular "subsection" in the Metro section.

And while reporters once viewed the obit desk as the worst assignment, some now see working there as one of the best.

Always something interesting at the Post Mortem. Today's obituaries include the Boston DJ George Taylor Morris who started the urban legend about a mysterious synchronicity between Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" and the movie classic "The Wizard of Oz." If you start them out at the same time "the lunatic is on the grass" line comes just when the Scarecrow begins dance near a green lawn. The line "got to keep the loonies on the path" comes just as Dorothy and the Scarecrow start down the Yellow Brick Road.

They've been cued up for you at the RollingStone if you want to have a look.

Called Home

Put a period to your existence? Scathed by the wing of the destroying angel? Summoned to the reward of the righteous?

I didn't know there was such a thing as Obit Magazine, but there is and it has a great article (quick fun read) on the evolution of the American Obituary.

The Passing News, by Jeff Gammage

H/T Washington Post's Post Mortem Blog

Housing an unexpected bargain in Portland

We reported on the story from the Portland Tribune last September about a woman who purchased a home and found $122,000 in cash under the floor boards. It started a two-year legal battle over who owned the funds - - they buyer or the seller? (At this stage in the battle it's the buyer.)

Now again comes a story from Portland about a man who found a package in a recently purchased house that contained historic war and U.S. bonds dating back to the 40s worth almost $200,000.

His first reaction:

“I think the biggest one was probably greed,” he said, laughing.

But the man, Nicholas Grod, realized they weren't his and started researching the original owner of the house. Wilbert Petterson bought the house in 1927. According to the Tribune, he was a firefighter who had a wife and two daughters, all deceased. But he found an obituary led to a grandson named Thomas Fagg living in Tulsa, OK.

“I was really specific with him too to say, ‘You know, this is not a joke. I’m not just prank calling you,’ ” Grod said about the phone call he made to the stranger.

Grod sent him the bonds, pictures of a grandfather he never knew and a letter earlier this month.

“I’m giving you this freely because of my trust in the great universe and the belief that it’s the right thing to do,” Grod wrote to him.

Farewell

Rebecca Walsh in today's Salt Lake Tribute
"Writing a Fond Farewell"

You can learn a lot about a place by reading the obits.

The article also tells of heart break that seeps out between the lines in a tragic death. A grieving mother whose ex husband killed her two children is understandably not mentioned. A young person dies and there is no cause of death. Suicide. Overdose.

Utah's obituaries are uncommon for their expressions of faith, belief in an afterlife, recognition of children who died before birth or in infancy. Of heavenly reunions and pre-existence and missions. The best obits spend less time on the resume and more time on the personality. "grandpa loved to eat tomato sandwiches and burned bread," "she loved Monte Python, Puccini, and poop jokes."

Obituary's in the Tribune were free until thirty years ago. Now cost as much as $1,000. Also in obituary News, the Casper Star published free Obituaries, but that ended last October.

Julianne Couch writes for the Star Tribune, " But readers also regularly peeked into the lives of tea-totaling, 100-year-old Mormons, hardscrabble miners, veterans of World Wars, and the men and women who grew up in sod houses or log cabins, rode horses to school, and built the nation's great roads, dams, and bridges."

Just a few weeks ago the obituary of Casparite Jim Adams was making the blog rounds.

His obituary reads in part "Jim who had tired of reading obituaries noting other's courageous battles with this or that disease, wanted it known that he lost his battle. It was primarily as a result of being stubborn and not fallowing doctor's orders or maybe for just living life a little too hard for better than five decades.

He was sadly deprived of his final wish, which was to be run over by a beer truck on the way to the liquor store to buy booze for a date."

The tradition of free obituaries is a sad loss. Obits provide lots of valuable information about people, communities, and society beyond names, dates, and places.E