By Deborah Howell
Sunday, April 9, 2006

When family and friends call The Post with a loved one's obituary, it's common to want the positive parts of a life to be emphasized.

The family of Gen. Samuel W. Koster Sr. was not happy that the headline and much of his Feb. 10 obituary dwelled on the My Lai massacre in the Vietnam War in 1968. Koster commanded the troops involved, though he wasn't present during the killings.

His son, Robert Koster of Vienna, said his father "performed quite a service to his nation in three wars" and his obituary "was sensationalized and less balanced than we would have preferred."

While other aspects of his life were mentioned, such as his service as superintendent of West Point and his assignments at Fort Meade and Aberdeen Proving Ground, Patricia Sullivan, who wrote the obit, said, "That [My Lai] was the most newsworthy event in his career."

Obituaries Editor Yvonne Shinhoster Lamb said: "It's a delicate balance in dealing with people's lives. We try to be as careful as possible to portray the whole person. The family wants to put forth the best face and doesn't want to remember the painful part. But it's those painful parts that sometimes shape who the person is in the public eye."

While I understand the family's concern, obituaries are news and must meet the same standards as any journalism in The Post. The only difference is the use of honorifics (Ms., Mr., Mrs.) as a form of respect. Divorces are noted. One complainer wanted stepchildren listed only as children, but accuracy is important, and that would have been inaccurate.

Readers often confuse news obituaries and paid death notices. The Post's news obituaries are free; they are about people who lived for a substantial time in the area, or people of significant news interest around the world. They do not include funeral and burial information, which are in the paid death notices. Family members can pay to have anything tasteful and a picture -- or not -- in the paid death notices.

Good news obituaries make the dead come alive. The Post has increased space for obituaries in the past few years, and their quality has risen. They are some of my favorite reading in the paper.

Obituaries are short life stories. One of the best reads in the Sunday Post is "A Local Life," which devotes space to someone who simply led an interesting life, whether or not he or she was "important."

The obituary writers are Lamb, Sullivan, Joe Holley, Adam Bernstein, Matt Schudel and Louie Estrada. They write on deadline and compete daily with the best in the business: the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. The obituary reporters come from different backgrounds (TV writing, editorial writing, arts writing) and have to be generalists with a broad reach. Schudel specializes in culture, music and sports; Sullivan in women, the environment, science and technology; Holley in politics and sports; and Bernstein in "mavericks, unfairly forgotten eccentrics and the occasional old movie star."

Don't they get tired of writing about dead people? "Somewhat to my surprise, it's incredibly interesting and wide-ranging," Sullivan said. Schudel added, "Once we get past the first paragraph, we are re-creating a life, not writing about a death."

The obit writers, like all good reporters, don't like to take someone's distant memory for a fact. They like evidence of college degrees, honors and military service.

If your Uncle Joe said he landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day and you can't prove that, it's more likely to be written that he was part of the invasion. Handed-down family lore is not always reliable. "People keep obituaries forever. We are responsible for the historical record. We have to be true to history," Bernstein said.

Are some obituaries prepared before a person dies? Yes, it's a good idea to prepare the most important information beforehand if a person is critically ill.

Last year, Bernstein received a call from Edward von Kloberg III, a Washington lobbyist who represented dictators, tyrants and other thoroughly disreputable characters. Kloberg knew that he was going to die soon and wanted his obituary prepared. Bernstein agreed to have lunch with him only if von Kloberg would agree to answer every question truthfully. And he did. "He was refreshingly honest about how he presented himself, unlike some family and friends who speak in a celebratory fashion that doesn't convey reality," Bernstein said.

One obituary complaint, from Bob Braxton of Fairfax, questioned why headlines include the word "dies" in the first entry immediately beneath the heading Obituaries. "I am not in the habit of looking for the living among the dead."

Braxton had stumbled across an arcane rule, the origin of which is lost in Post history: The most important obit of the day used "dies" in the head, though no other did. The rule was recently eliminated, and Anne Ferguson-Rohrer, Metro copy desk chief, said, "I would wager that out of any 100 readers, 95 had no inkling that 'dies' designates an obit as the lead obit."

Another reader noticed that there are far more black faces in the paid death notices than in the news obituaries. Lamb isn't certain of the reason, but thinks it may be cultural and that some minorities are not aware that they can request a news obit, while a paid death notice is part of the service of a mortuary. Lamb is concerned that The Post doesn't get many Asian or Hispanic obituaries, either.

If you want to submit information for an obituary, The Post has an information line at 202-334-7389. Obituaries are run only within 30 days of death. The fax number is 202-334-6553 and the e-mail address is newsobits@washpost.com .

Deborah Howell can be reached at 202-334-7582 or atombudsman@washpost.com.