viewpoint. Sometimes it's a zinger that the obit writer can't resist getting in.
Advance researched obits on notables help the obit writer on deadline to produce a timely tribute. These, as we've mentioned before, are kept in the paper's morgue, awaiting updates when needed, polished up, and then sent to be published.
The writer's job is made even easier if the notable has granted an interview with the newspaper toward the twilight of their breathing, to provide some hoped for rich background that might make its way into the piece the deceased will never see.
Recently, we have three obits that were helped along immensely by the subject providing some "sound bites."
Take Wendell Ford, the longtime senator from Kentucky who passed away at 90. As anyone who knows anything about Kentucky, you should know the state's biggest day occurs on the first Saturday in May, when The Kentucky Derby is run. It's like their Mardi Gras. If you need to know what the Kentucky Derby is, I'm not going to help you.
Apparently, Mr. Ford told a joke that I've heard, so many times, the obit writer considered it fitting to close out Mr. Ford's obit.
It seems there is a gentleman at Churchill Down on Derby day who notices a rare empty seat and takes advantage of it and sits down. The woman next to the gentleman tells him her husband always sits there, but he passed away. Being considerate, the gentleman offers his condolences and wonders why the woman didn't give the ticket for the seat to someone in the family. She replies she would have, but they're all at the husband's funeral.
Then we have Donald R. Keough, 88, who was a CEO of Coca-Cola, who was notable for riding out the marketing storm that introduced "New Coke" to the world in 1985.
If anyone is old enough to remember that one, Coca-Cola introduced a new formula for their beverage. It was extensively taste tested and Coke executives thought it would help them in the "Cola Wars" with Pepsi.
People rebelled against the new product. You'd have though it was the medieval times when the calendar was adjusted and people thought they were doing to die sooner because 13 days had been eliminated.
I remember our July 4th cookout where the neighbor's son eight year old Scott voiced his displeasure with Coca-Cola. "How could they do that?" I thought to myself, if Scott thinks it was a bad idea, yikes, there must he millions of people who don't like the idea of a New Coke that will replace the old Coke and make it impossible to go back to the original formula. And there were millions.
Well, Donald Keough and his band of execs knew they made a mistake, and within 10 weeks yanked the "New Coke" and the original Coke was labeled "Coke Classic." Sales jumped, and the proof that there is no such thing as bad publicity was again produced. The "Coke Classic" name was kept for decades.
Of course, there were those who saw conspiracy and thought Coke cleverly engineered publicity that would goose their sales. Mr. Keough offered words that he said should go on his tombstone, "He's not that dumb and he's not that smart."
Mr. Keough retired from Coca-Cola in 1993, proving how adroit he was in recovering from a case study faux pas. Darryl F. Zanuck predicted that his obituary would continue after the comma and his age, that he was the producer of "Gone With the Wind." And it did.
Mr. Keough was right to assume that "New Coke" and "Classic Coke" would stay with him like the pitch that Ralph Branca threw to Bobby Thomson.
And the last one, at least for this posting, we have Arnaud de Borchgrave, a journalist who passed away at 88.
Mr. Borchgrave's life was that of cat, he must have had nine of them, because one of them was surviving being wounded on D-Day as he landed at Juno beach as he left the Canadian landing craft he was in. He was a teenager at the time, so by the time he hit 88 he managed to fill his life up with even more events.
So, we shouldn't be surprised that Mr. de Borchgrave, being a newspaper editor, throughout his life suggested what should be on his tombstone: "I knew it would come to this."
He was of course right.
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