By Margaret Eby
The 10 a.m. meeting was always the same . That ’s whenKay Powellwould gather her staff to ransack through the death notice . These were the short , rote missives from funeral homes and chapels — no bunk , just the unhappy facts , another birth date that now had its declaratory bookend .
But to Powell , a newsman atThe Atlanta Journal - Constitution , these were stark naked ingredients . She knew how to identify the subtle clues argue a thread deserving tugging on . In the skeleton precis of a somebody ’s life , she could see a full portraiture just wait to be colored in .
When she found it , the meeting was over — and she hit the phones . Like any other reporter , she had questions to need . Even though her subjects were dead , their stories were just beginning to occur to biography .
The Georgia nativehas a syrupy drawl that turn “ ten ” into “ tin can ” ; an easy , smoky joke ; and a insurance of never leaving the planetary house without lip rouge and earring on—“If I ’m go through the drive - through window , the part of me that you could see looks like I ’ve been a generative citizen , ” Powell jokes . From 1996 to 2009 , if you knew anyone in Atlanta who overtake away , she probably knew them too . dying was her beat , her bequest built by ceremonially assembling profile of what she calls “ over-the-top average masses . ”
In her land tenure at theJournal - Constitution , Powell wrote poetic , amusing , revelatoryobituariesfor the following : a moonshiner , a lobotomy affected role , aTuskegee Airman , a attorney famous for her cedar - smoke salmon , and a major planet ( “ Pluto , the least of the major celestial bodies , never asked to be a planet , ” theobit opened ) . She observe a polarity on her desk quotingWashington Postobituaries editor program Richard Pearson ’s favorite saying about the professing : “ God is my assignment editor . ”
Powell get her startle in high school in Valdosta , Georgia , where she was editor of the school day newspaper and edited the Saturday adolescent Sir Frederick Handley Page at theValdosta Daily Times . After she graduate from college , the paper hired her as a reporter . She sat in on community meetings , write a serial on the ravages of drug abuse in the county , and reported on the hearings of a notorious local incest event . She learned to see for stories in everything from grocery circulars to court transcripts .
In 1994 , Powell joinedThe Atlanta Journal - Constitution , where , as administrative supporter to the editorial board , she combed through the letters to the editor in chief . At the time , the obituary section had been relegated to the copydesk , but editors Ron Martin and Jim Wooten were eager for a revamp . They conceive of pages celebrate the lives of Atlanta citizens who otherwise might not make the document — not fame or billionaires , but neighbor and friends . Wooten discover Powell had a knack for contend with readers and shine their letters to the paper to perfection .
“ When I was called in and asked if I would please think about it , I was call back , ‘ Oh , goody - treat ! ’ ” Powell says . “ Every other reporter was cover yet another opening day or weather story . I was getting to write about vagabond and occupation and political loss leader . ”
And she receive to do it her way . “ It ’s easygoing to take the track of least electrical resistance and write about the beloved instructor , darling passenger car , beloved preacher , ” Powell says . Instead , “ we looked for people whose lifetime readers would be curious about — I saw a man who was a greeter at Kmart , but turn out to be the retired CEO of a piece of furniture party who had taken the job because he got drill and missed being around people . I found a woman who had sung at Martin Luther King Jr. ’s funeral . ” Powell ’s more than 2000 obits paint a film of a complex city and an germinate South , and go well beyond the tropes of the form—“beloved grandmother ” or “ Renaissance man ” or “ consecrate public servant . ”
One of her favorite opening communication channel , “ George Hopkins died again Friday , ” was about a Isle of Man whose heart briefly lay off while testing diving event equipment in his early days . Another favourite : “ At Matthews Cafeteria , a smile Thelma Hogan ring you by your first name , asked after your mama , made sure your cornbread was cook just like you liked , and hugged your fry in her lap while she rang up your lunch on the immediate payment register . She did that about 800 times a day for 43 yr . ”
Investigating the livesof the recently deceased is a sore endeavor . It ’s also a clangour course in adept journalism . Powell quickly learned to avoid asking boilerplate questions , like “ What were his rocking horse ? ” Instead , she says , “ The agency to phrase it is , ‘ When he had a small time to himself — time he could do what was fun for himself , that made him happy when he did it — what would he do ? ’ ” That ’s how one reporter under Powell ’s tenure found out that a gentleman’s gentleman who made his living pricing groceries also kick upstairs swag - winningskunksfor national shows , and had an airbrushed picture of his favorite skunk on his motorcycle .
Powell has rules : 1 ) pen about womanhood as populate their own life story , so “ no Mrs. M. obits . ” ( The originalNew York Timeswrite - up for rocket scientist Yvonne Brill , which open by praise Brill ’s “ mean kick stroganoff , ” rankled her . ) 2 ) debar a laundry tilt of acquirement . “ I ca n’t stand a résumé obit , ” Powell says . 3 ) In interviews , “ Keep your mouth shut and let ’em say it . And when you ’re done , then you have what you have to say . ”
But most importantly : 4 ) Fact - hinderance everything , and 5 ) turn off through the euphemism , clichés , and half - true statement we use to let the cat out of the bag about the dead . “ It has to be factual , and it has to be precise . If there ’s a stepdaughter , you say that ; I do n’t manage if he loved her like his own girl , ” Powell says . “ Our job was to respond interrogation , not raise doubtfulness . We always give the case of decease . We write about self-destruction , even though many papers wo n’t . The interrogative you ’re afraid to ask is the question you must ask . ”
Fact - checking home myths was a big part of the job . A common one ? That someone had played for the Atlanta Crackers , a minor league baseball team once based in the city . “ Everyone says , ‘ Daddy played ball for the Crackers , ’ and usually , Daddy did n’t . They do n’t hump any different until you call them , ” she enunciate . Some of the facts Powell uncovered were uncomfortable . While researching an obit for a woman named Patti Hall , a volunteer at the pro - life Pregnancy Resource Center of Gwinnett , she discovered that Hall had had an abortion . “ You do encounter that , things the family will recite you , ‘ Please do n’t put that in the necrology . ’ But then you have to say , ‘ Yes , I will , and this is why , and this is your opportunity to answer or elaborate on it . ’ ”
One of Powell ’s smashing triumphs was in 1998 , when she write the obituary of Calvin F. Craig , a former tremendous Draco of the Ku Klux Klan who resigned from the group in 1968 . Powell spent hours coaxing his boy and widow to go on the record . “ They were passing the phone back and forth , and I was explaining that one fashion or another , Craig was going to be write about . This way , they ’d have a spokesperson in the while . When I finally get his Logos to lecture to me , the newsroom gave me a digest standing ovation . ” The musical composition included the story of Craig ’s longtime friendship with Xernona Clayton , the coordinator of the Model Cities programme in Atlanta , a Black cleaning woman who liaised between Craig and the mayor . “ Mayor Allen said only in Atlanta could the contact with the KKK be through a Black woman , ” Clayton say Powell .
The most unmanageable interviews ? “ Families and friends of other reporter , ” she says .
Over the years Powell ’s prose developed a rage trace ; one reader , a librarian named Thomas Hobbs , return her the cognomen “ the Doyenne of the Death Beat . ” Many thanked her for sharing the narrative of someone who inspired them . At one conference , Hobbs walked up to her and repeated , verbatim , whole paragraphs of some of her obituaries from remembering . “ It amazed me how our necrology could change people ’s life , ” she says . “ I wrote an obit of one man who quit his job to go study for a nonprofit because he knew deep down that ’s what he should be doing . His married woman ring me after the obituary ran , because she hear from a gentleman who observe that obit in his desk drawer and reads it every day . You ca n’t predict what ’s going to touch someone . ”
“ I did n’t want to go to sleep — I wanted to just die at my desk , ” Powell says , laughing . But in 2009 , amid a wave of buyout at the paper , withdraw she did . Deathnotices on the obituary Thomas Nelson Page are now mostly reader - accede , as they are in most American dailies . “ I can see that it ’s a luxury , perhaps , to have a dedicated author or editor for necrology , ” Powell says . “ Newspapers are a very dissimilar animal now . ”
Yet she still pens the episodic obituary , including in 2009 , when her mother died : “ Mrs. Powell take the greatest delectation in sharing her dwelling in Valdosta and business firm at Cherry Lake with home and friends , her children and their friends , her grandchildren and great - grandchildren , friends ’ children and their grandchildren and sometimes even stranger . In fact , after she was widowed , there were 13 toothbrush in her privy , all kept there by people who on a regular basis enjoyed her company . ” In 2015 , Powell write an obituary forManley Pointer , one of the peafowl atFlannery O’Connor ’s house museum , Andalusia Farm , in Milledgeville , Georgia .
In 2010 , Powell was honored with a lifetime accomplishment accolade from The Society of Professional Obituary Writers for help “ give obituary write a licit and respected place in news media . ” Writer Marilyn Johnson praised her for having “ recorded affair that would n’t have been tape by anyone else , sure enough not by her brother diarist . Kay Powell has been responsible for fighting the historical sexual unbalance on the obit Sir Frederick Handley Page . ”
In a part of the newsprint where the lives of average people shine , Powell crystallise the fact that there can be gravitas in death through a spirit well think back .
These days , in addition to her writing , Powell collapse talks , works as a mentor for a halfway shoal writing program , and prosecute her passion projects . She reads , goes to long luncheon with her friend , and has contributed to the Georgia Tech Living History Program , making usage of her southerly accent by narrate a video . “ I get time to be work-shy . I play bridge . I go to readings . I just enjoy every single day , even if I ’m in my nightdress all day , ” she says . “ Work any of that you want into my obituary . ”
This story originally appeared in the March / April 2016 issue of mental_floss magazine and previously ran onAtavist .
