Kate Stone Lombardi

Word Count 1114

For many years, I wrote for a major national newspaper. The paper was famous, but I was not — mostly I reported for a regional section, covering whatever happened in a specific county in New York.

It was a great gig, but every year an onerous assignment rolled around, dubbed “The Lives They Lived.” These were obituaries of people who lived in the county, died the previous calendar year, and made an impact on their community.

I had a good deal of leeway in choosing who to include. It might be a well-known politician or artist, but it also included teachers, devoted volunteers, a compassionate veterinarian, and others who may have been under the radar but affected many lives.

The assignment was a bear. This was in the Before Time — during the 1990s and the early aughts when print newspapers had loads of advertisements and plenty of room for copy. The damn thing ran for pages, and each obit included a photo.

The first time I took on the feature, I let it slide, figuring I had all year to work on it. By the end of November, all I had was a fat folder of notes and announcements. That December was a marathon of interviews and writing and hunting down photos at the busiest time of the year. (I still had young kids and was also getting ready for the holidays.)

It took me a while to learn how to manage this mammoth assignment. The key was to keep on top of it all year round. By the end of each month, I should not only have compiled a list of people who died the previous 31 days, but also researched each of them, decided who to include, and then interviewed one or two people who had known the deceased and could speak about him or her anecdotally. I also needed a photo of each person.

Finally, I learned to write a draft obituary for each of the roughly two to four people I chose each month. “Got to round up the dead,” I’d mutter, trudging to my office, winter, spring, summer, and fall. Rinse and repeat, always backing up the work, and then put the whole thing together in December.

After a few years, I had the project down pat. The humongous “Lives They Lived” feature would run and I’d get an extra-big check. (Keep in mind, these things are relative.)

I had files labeled “February Dead,” “March Dead,” etc. What’s gratifying about writing obituaries is that they are actually stories about individual lives, not deaths. I enjoyed talking to the people who had known and cared about that person. Those interviews helped me bring color and warmth to the profiles. I wrote each story to honor the life with respect.

Things went smoothly until the last year I was given the assignment. December rolled around. I’d been on top of it — dutifully researching and writing the obits at the end of each month. In fact, for the first time, I finished early! When I thought the whole project was wrapped up and put to bed, someone I’ll call “Alexander Krasnoff” died, on Christmas Eve no less.

I couldn’t ignore his death. Krasnoff was a well-known local naturalist who had written several books about his explorations in the county. In fact, the newspaper I wrote for had extensive clippings about him in the “morgue.” aka “clippings,” cut-out print news stories, about prominent people.

But it was the fourth week in December. I had to get the whole “Lives They Lived” package in that day, because it would be included in the Sunday edition of the first weekend in January.

Clearly, I had no time to do a thorough job of writing up the guy. I didn’t make any calls to get quotes on Krasnoff. He was prominent enough that there was sufficient public information available. I could easily cull a profile based on what had already been written about the man. I even used quotes from Krasnoff himself, lifted from (and of course attributed to) an interview that he’d given 20 years earlier. Bonus — the newspaper already had a photo of Krasnoff on file.

Phew. Story completed. Krasnoff included with a nice write-up. Package sent in. I was off to go wrap presents.

At the time, pre-cell, I had an office line in my home. When the phone rang the following Sunday, I couldn’t imagine who would be calling on a weekend. I picked up.

“Hello?”

“Is this Ms. Lombardi?”

“Yes.”

“This is Alexander Krasnoff speaking.”

I was dumbstruck. Literally. I couldn’t speak. He continued.

“Imagine my surprise when I awoke this morning to read about my untimely demise in today’s newspaper.”

Radio silence on my end.

“Ms. Lombardi? Are you there?”

What could I do? There was absolutely zero point in trying to get out of it.

“Mr. Krasnoff,” I choked out. “I don’t know where to begin in apologizing. I have no idea how this happened. I….I…well, obviously we’ll run a correction, and, well, I just don’t know what to say...”

“I believe I can shed some light on this matter,” he said, his patrician tones chilly.

Krasnoff spoke, understandably, as if he was conversing with a complete idiot. He explained that his father, also named Alexander Krasnoff, had just died. The caller was his namesake. “Well,” my aggrieved caller continued “I will say that it was quite gratifying to get so many calls this morning from people who were delighted to discover I still dwelt in the land of the living.”

Krasnoff — Krasnoff, Jr., that is — went on to say that he thought this whole “unfortunate situation” could be cleared up if the newspaper (the national edition that is) would write a profile about him, highlighting his good work.

“Mr. Krasnoff,” I said. “That sounds like a wonderful idea, but of course, this is way over my head. And I think we can both agree that I would not be the one to write it.”

I assumed, of course, that I would be fired.

During my more than two decades at the paper, I worked for 12 different editors. By some miracle, this one had a weird sense of humor. He couldn’t stop laughing. Finally, he pulled himself together and said he would call Krasnoff himself.

The correction ran; the profile did not.

Coda: About a decade after the Krasnoff fiasco, my husband and I were hiking in the woods up county and got hopelessly turned around. Finally, we came across a marker. It read” “Krasnoff Private Property! Absolutely No Trespassing!”

We hightailed it out of there. I didn’t want to push my luck.

Kate is a journalist, author and essayist. For 20 years, she was a regular contributor to The New York Times. Kate’s work has also appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Time.com, Good Housekeeping, Readers Digest, AARP’s “The Ethel” and other national publications. She is the author of “THE MAMA’S BOY MYTH” (Avery/Penguin, 2012), a nonfiction book on raising boys.