It takes a good obituary writer, as well as a colorful subject, to close the piece with something more memorable than the subject is no longer with us. A well placed one liner, generally at the end of the piece, will ensure even greater immortality.
The combination of Douglas Martin's piece on Ned McWherter, a popular Tennesee governor, and Mr. McWherter's apparently own outsized personality, create a memorable obituary closing.
Mr. McWherter seemed destined to become what he did, perhaps because of his physical size and personality, but also because of an early vocation that followed leaving several universities. After work in a shoe factory, he became a traveling shoe salesman in Tennesee. If Mr. McWherter's further life story through the obituary were set to music, Dolly Parton would sing it.
Ned, with what seems like the characteristic humility that can only come from confident people, basically predicted that no matter who you were, the attendance at your funeral is going to be guided by the weather.
But it's even better when you read how he said it.
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