The Obit Writer

I don't know much about Clay Risen, but I do know he scored a rare obituary byline hat trick yesterday when three! of his bylined tribute obits appeared in yesterday's edition of the New York Times. There are probably no official statistics kept on these things, but when they occur the obituary aficionados like myself take notice.

The obituary writer is tasked with writing about the deceased who have gained notoriety from a wide variety of endeavors. Take yesterday's trifecta. It required Mr. Risen to write with authority on Paul T. Kwami, 70, who gained fame as the director of a choral group that specialized in singing African American spiritual music.

From there he segued to write about Kevin M. Cahil, 86, a physician who was a tropical disease expert who was credited with being one of New York's first doctors to warn of the AIDS crisis.

And a few page turns later, a Clay Risen obituary appears on the back page of yesterday's first section on Lowry Mays, 87, a businessman who by circumstances found himself the owner of a failing radio station that he parlayed into creating Clear Channel Communications, an industry juggernaut that eventually was the parent company for 1,200 radio stations nationwide.

Think of the subjects Mr. Risen became sort of a one-day expert on: a subject who became famous for leading a choral group in winning a Grammy Award for Roots gospel singing; a subject who became an expert in humanitarian medicine who worked in 65 countries, in addition to helping to resuscitate the Irish Historical Society in New York;  a subject who reluctantly became a owner of a failing radio station who pivoted from being a petroleum engineer to the CEO of a massive company that controlled 1,200 radio stations nationwide. They played it, we listened.

Mr. Risen's style is pretty straightforward, with few cute flourishes. He does somewhat sneak them in when he describes Dr. Cahill's speech as being a cross between a Gaelic brogue and "Noo Yawkese." To me, speech like that is better than a cut glass, plummy British accent.

Mr. Risen comes to the obits page from being a historian on Teddy Roosevelt. In fact, that's where I first encountered his name when I saw a book he had written on TR. My daughter Susan is a big TR fan, as I am. I think when I was six years old or so my mother and father took me to his birthplace on East 20th Street in Manhattan to tour the museum. My father, born in 1915, was born not that far from TR's home into a family on 32nd Street and 2nd Avenue that was certainly distinctly different from TR's. I've also been to Sagamore Hill in Oyster Bay, another TR homestead, several times. All good takes.

Mr. Risen has the look of a youthful history professor, who may or may not wear jackets with patches on the elbows. I can certainly see him striding through a leafy Ivy League campus on his way to his next class carrying a few books in a knapsack, perhaps even being mistaken for a student.

My hope is that Mr. Risen remains an obituary page byline fixture. He was raised in Nashville, Tennessee, and with enough presence at the headquarters of the NYT on Eighth Avenue, he will eventually gain a "Noo Yawkese" speech. 

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