I suppose this is the way I’d want my desmise announced: short and sweet. As reported by PuffHo, here it is, as published in the Fargo-Moorhead (North Dakota) Forum:
PuffHo gives a little bit more information:
Legler’s daughter, Janet Stoll, says that her father had long insisted on a short and sweet death notice.
“He said over and over, when I die I want my obituary to just say ‘Doug Died,’” Stoll told the Forum. ”[Other people’s obituaries] would say ‘he was the president of this, a director of this’ and Dad would say, ‘What, couldn’t they hold down a job?'”
Stoll added that her dad, who died on Jun. 27 at the age of 85, was “very lighthearted and had a great sense of humor.”
According to the Forum, Legler worked for many years as a driver for the Nash Finch Company. He is said to have been a car enthusiast and an avid singer who loved country music.
Which reminds me of a Jewish joke, which I’m able to relate because I’m a landsman:
Mrs. Greenblatt comes into a newspaper office and says she wants to put her husband’s obituary into the paper. “I want just two words,” she says: “Saul died.”
The editor says, “Well, that’s fine, but the minimum price for an obituary allows you up to five words.”
Mrs. Greenblatt thinks a minute. “Okay,” she says. “Use this one: Saul died. Cadillac for sale.”
I’ll be here all week, folks.
sub
Doug died. That’s sweet.
Brought to mind a similarly silly obituary, spoken in this case, from what may be one of the best movies of its kind every made*, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension.
*My tongue seems to be stuck to my cheek. (But really, that movie is awesome. For some definitions of awesome. When you are in the right frame of mind.
I can definitely see a form of awesome in:
“Remember…no matter where you go…there you are.”
He didn’t bring down the curtain and join the choir invisible? He wasn’t called home to his Lord and Savior? He sleeps not with his fathers? He has not gone strolling in the garden with Jesus? He had not passed into eternity? He died.
Real NoDaks, born and raised, can be very direct, blunt, and pragmatically realistic. That’s what I love about them.
My mother was from North Dakota and I think she would have liked an obituary like that one, too. 🙂 She had a great sense of humor–very earthy. 😉
My dad SD-born. He would have enjoyed this.
My wife and my five sons, of whom she is not the mother, all know that when I finally meet up with The Grim Reaper I want that event to be announced in The Arrow Lakes News, a weekly which comes out every Thursday,( circulation 1000 +/-), in the following terms:
“John Perkins fell off his perch on…and died” This is exactly how a Mynah Bird we used to own, went.
Good story John, Are these the B.C. Arrow lakes?
Yes – Trish, my wife,and I live in Nakusp, known by all who visit us as Paradise,( of the secular variety of course !!). Sorry I took so long to respond. We spent a couple of days away from our computers.
Ha ha! My great-grandmother had a budgie named Joey that talked quite a bit. Apparently, he one day said “Joey’s sick” & my great-grandmother told him not to be silly, he wasn’t sick. He repeated, “Joey’s sick” a few more times then died.
Wow. That is both amazing and heartbreaking at the same time.
That’s also an Ole and Lena joke, except that the last three words are Boat for Sale.
Works better as a Jewish joke though, I think!
Depends on whether you are from Minnesota.
A couple of nuns go to a stone mason who does gravestones, and they say Sister Maria has died, and we need a headstone for her. He asks, what they want on it and they say, “Well she was very pious. We were thinking of ‘Born a virgin, Lived a virgin, Died a virgin.'”
The stone mason says “Why don’t you save some money and just put ‘Returned unopened'”?
LOL!
I’d’ve preferred, “Doug Gone.”
Doug Gone, Doggone it.
OK I think that makes you Jerry’s writer – he needs some new material!
How much for the Caddy?
I like the contrast of the smiling picture with the somber but kurt message. It’s kind of like when I got to smile on my driver’s licence & health card (no more); I always thought I should look angry for the driver’s licence, since that’s how I’d look to the officer who viewed it & I should be holding my head sick for the health card picture because that’s how the hospital staff would see me.
I fortunately still have the non-picture red and white health card.
Awesome obit! I already requested no obit, but I might change my mind and steal this one.
“I’ll be here all week, folks.”
“Try the roast beef.”
I’ve seen comments like the above after dubious jokes a number of times. Obviously drawing attention to the clanger, but I don’t see the context. Could someone explain please?
It has to do with summers in the Catskills, where wealthy families escaped the NYC heat while not-wealthy families would send their teens and young adults to work between school years. Invariably, there were comics taking the stage, and such lines came from them. At least, that’s my understanding. I think the Jewish parts of the Catskills were meant to mimic, yet with Jewish cultural style, the far richer, white upper crust’s summer places. Of course, some of those were mansions.
I’m not sure about the origin specifically being the Catskills, but as docatheist mentioned, it’s what a (not so talented) stand-up comic would say to a crowd after a set at a supper club or some such.
Thanks, a bit of Googling turned up that and related lines.
I read a number of years ago of a guy who chose something like the following for his death notice:
“Fred Smith has conked out…”
I don’t remember the full announcement, but it was brief and shorn of the usual platitudes.
John Le Mesurier the actor best known for playing Sergeant Wilson in Dads’ Army announced his own 1983 death in the Times thus:
“John le Mesurier wishes it to be known that he conked out on November 15th. He sadly misses family and friends.”
Maybe that’s the one you were thinking of.
Dad’s Army is sooo funny!
Thanks, that must be it. Was it really 32 years ago? Perhaps I saw a later reference to it.
I’ve long thought we should try our best to talk about how wonderful someone is while they’re still around to enjoy the conversation 🙂
Now, that was a wonderful comment Toon. 😎
Thanks 😉
Why someone would need to be a “landsman” to relate a Jewish joke is beyond me; Jews are just like everyone else, only more so…
I think that’s because the humor of the joke relies on some negative stereotypes. I’d never tell a joke like that because I’m not Jewish.
Doug dyed “Doug died”.
Short, sweet, memorable.
HTL fail, but I think still readable.
Swedes, are among my favourite vegetables!
Reminds me of Irish UK comedian Spike Milligan’s request. On his grave-stone he wanted the words “I told you I was ill”. When the time came the overseers of the graveyard (In Rye, East Sussex) wouldn’t allow it, deeming it to be too frivolous. A compromise was reached by allowing it to be engraved in Irish Gaelic.
Professor, you are too young to think too much about death. 🙂
I think we should contemplate it more – then we wouldn’t get so het up about it!
Francis Beaumont had it right in this poem –
On the Tombs in Westminster Abbey
Mortality, behold and fear,
What a change of flesh is here!
Think how many royal bones
Sleep within this heap of stones;
Here they lie, had realms and lands,
Who now want strength to stir their hands
Where from their pulpits; soiled with dust,
They preach, in greatness is no trust.
Here’s an acre sown indeed
With the richest, royal’st seed
That the earth did e’er suck in
Since the first man died for sin;
Here the bones of birth have cried,
Though gods they were, as men they died;
Here are wands, ignoble things,
Dropped from the ruined sides of kings.
Here’s a world of pomp and state
Buried in dust, once dead by fate.
I like Peter O’Toole’s preferred epitaph: “It distresses us to return work which is not perfect.”
And, Jerry, if the task ever falls to me, my obit of you may be sweet, but it will not be short!
There is an apropos story about Dabid Hilbert’s funeral speech for a former student. The student had had an approach for settling the Riemann Hypothesis, and he had sent his draft to Hilbert. Hilbert liked the approach quite a bit, but as it turned out, the proof had an error. Hilbert nonetheless thought that the approach was amongst the more promising out there, so he encouraged the student to continue working on it.
Unfortunately, the student died the following year. The story then continues (from Prime Obsession by John Derbyshire, quoted on Math Overflow):
My father had a book of old epitaphs; there was one that he liked and said that he wanted on his stone:
“Here lies Tom Smith.
That’s very true.
Who was he? What was he?
What’s that to you?”
No, we didn’t do it. Unfortunately.
I’ve always wanted a grateful obituary, like a friend’s that opened, “Having thoroughly enjoyed his time here among us…”
I always liked the sombre Victorian epitaph:
Take notice, traveller passing by
As you are now, so once was I.
As I am now, so will you be.
Prepare for death – and follow me.
There are some interesting ones from Pompeii as well. Many talk about good wives who “made wool” which is a way to demonstrate that one was a good wife.
So glad I was never a Roman wife! I’d probably die in child birth and I’d suck at this wool thing. I hate wool!