Annie Oakley

Is it too late for the NYT to issue a correction to one of its obituaries? Say, one from 1926? I'm sure they prize accuracy, so from here we're going to send this posting to their Public Editor. I don't really expect to see a correction, but it is amazing how far you can reach back and find people who know just little more than you do.

As previously posted, I got The Doorstopper for Christmas, the NYT 'Book of the Dead,' a formidable sized tome with proprietary web access to 10,000 digital obituaries from 1851 to 2016. For some people, the book may be a reason to never leave the house again.

Anyone who follows current obituaries has a feel for how they're written. There are styles presented by the writer, but you can usually be guaranteed a snappy opening, an informative narrative of their life and the era they live in, along with some pithy quotes from contemporaries, or even themselves, and sometimes a zinger as fresh as lemon juice squirted into your eye.

Last night I took an interest in reading the obituary of Albert Einstein, who passed away April 19. 1955. I was interested in reading in how his theories might have been presented to a 1955 readership. Well, they weren't. They weren't explained, they were mentioned.

The obituary was not bylined, something I found rather amazing. There is an almost comical image of Uncle Albert standing on the stern of a small sailboat that is tied to a pier, with the caption that he loved sailing. This is I did not know. It is nearly comical to see the frizzy-haired professor holding a sail's hoist rope wearing a trench coat and a tie. It is a 1929 photo for the sailboat present he received on his 50th birthday. Uncle Al went way back.

The obituary is not particularly long, mentions a son, but not a wife, and basically rambles on with outquotes from his writings about social topics. The headline to the obit goes: Einstein Noted as an Iconoclast in Research, Politics and Religion, sub-headed: His Early Spare-Time Reflections in Bern Led to Strong Belief in Social Equality and Hope for a World Government. No snappy wiseguy reflection on the man who gave us a Big Bang.

As for Annie Oakley, I noticed from the above photo, which is the one  that accompanied the print obituary in the book, that Annie appears to be holding the rifle as a left-handed person would. I'm left-handed, and I tend to notice where we differ from right-handed people. My father was left-handed, but even born in 1915, they considered left-handedness a sign of the devil and would convert the child to write right-handed. The Latin for left eye is oculus sinister. Sinister eye. By the 1950s they stopped the conversion and let us lefties be lefties.

I was surprised that someone born in 1860 like Annie would have been allowed to stay left-handed. What to do? Who to ask? There is always someone.

I got an answer to my question in a pleasant reply from Eileen Litchfield, the president of the Annie Oakley Center Foundation.

But before I tell you the answer I'll inform the world that since my inquiry likely sent Ms. Litchfield to read the same obituary, she came across a typo in the obituary. Annie was given the nickname "Watania Cecilia," by Chief Sitting Bull, a phrase that translates from the Lakota meaning "Little Sure Shot." Ms. Litchfield tells us the obit spelled the first word "watanic."

As for which handedness Annie was, I'm told I was half right, which anyone should tell you is far better than completely wrong. Annie was ambidextrous. And considering the way she shot, no one was going to make her write with any hand she didn't want to.

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