The advance obits that Margalit Fox had been assigned to write for the NYT when she wasn't on deadline have been bobbing up to the obit page as the subjects reach their final resting place. When the tide goes out on a subject's life, the tide comes in with a Margalit advance obit.
How many advance obits there are that Ms. Fox wrote is unknown to us. We're still getting Robert McFadden's advance obits, usually when the subject passes the 80 or 90 year-old mark. Mr. McFadden is still with us, and to the best of my knowledge is still with the NYT in some capacity. So he still might be churning out copy that we later see. Ms. Fox has left the NYT, so we're only going to eventually see what she left behind.
And it is a delight to read when it happens. The subject might not appreciate it is their death that gets us a post-employment Margalit obit, but that's the way it goes.
My knowledge of Latin pales compared to what Ms. Fox reveals her knowledge to be as she tells us the story of Reginald Foster, a priest for whom Latin was a living language, who just passed away at 81.
And his knowledge of Latin makes anyone else's knowledge look only large enough to fill a thimble. He was considered "the foremost Latinist in Rome, and quite possibly the world.
Ms. Fox's lede evokes Robert McG. Thomas Jr.'s memorable 1998 obit on Charles McCartney, who was known for his travels with goats: "You take a fellow who looks like a goat, travels around with goats, eats with goats, lies down among goats and smells like a goat and it won't be long before people will be calling him the Goat Man."
"Father Foster dreamed in Latin, cursed in Latin, banked in Latin and ultimately tweeted in Latin," and was connected with the language in so many other ways that it was truly fitting that Ms. Fox stated his age at his demise as LXXXI.
In the liveliest of obits, Ms. Fox tells us how Father Foster contributed to providing the Latin translation on A.T.M.s in the Vatican. I really doubt I'll ever return to the Vatican, having been there when I was 15 when touring Europe one summer. But for shits and giggles, I think I'd love to face the challenge of selecting the prompts in Latin.
I do have to say I chicken out when locally I'm asked if I want to proceed in Spanish. I'm afraid of messing up and holding up the line, if there is one.
I once asked a woman I worked with who was bilingual with Spanish if she selected the Spanish prompts when using an A.T.M. She looked at me funny and said no, she always used the English prompts. I was just asking.
Apparently Father Foster acquired Latin fever at a very early age and loved the declining and conjugation of words. I remember the son of our upstairs tenant who was only slightly older than I was who went to Catholic grammar school in the 50s, who spent time on homework assignments declining nouns and conjugating verbs. To me it looked like he was solving cryptograms.
Ms. Fox tells us Father Foster served four popes and had an appearance that completely belied what you might expect of a clergy scholar: "He looked like a stevedore, dressed like a janitor, swore like a sailor (usually in Latin) and spoke Latin with the riverine fluency of a roman orator." (Who was there to understand him?)
Father Foster also liked to drink. Imagine being set upon by Father Foster in a Blarney Stone when for some reason you started arguing with him over something and he started to insult your looks and your mother, in Latin. You wouldn't know what the fuck to do or say. I wonder if Father Foster's nose was ever broken. The obit doesn't say.
Father Foster's path through life was more pre-ordained than anyone could guess. His father, and his grandfather were plumbers in Milwaukee. As a lad, Reginald apprenticed with his father.
The word plumber is derived from the Latin word for lead, plumbum. Historically, lead was a metal used heavily in the manufacture of pipes for plumbing. The periodic symbol for lead is Pb.
As soon as young Reginald picked up a wrench to pass to his father he was engaged in learning Latin.
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