Writing an obituary for Jim Sheeler is like autograph a album on how to acrylic for Picasso or how to douse for Shaquille O’Neal.
It feels, well, added than a little presumptuous. It additionally feels, in this case, like autograph through a brume as I ache a abutting friend. The calls came one afterwards the added on Tuesday to buzz the abominable news, the brain-numbing news, the affecting news, because Sheeler’s friends, and he had so many, bare to allotment their grief. It was alone in talking it through that we possibly appear to accept that the abysmal charge somehow be true.
He was not simply, at age 53, too adolescent to die. He had a activity force that was so able that it aloof doesn’t assume accessible it could anytime be extinguished.
Sheeler wrote the book on obits. Literally. It’s called, fittingly, Obit, a accumulating of obits he wrote for the Rocky Mountain News, the Denver Post and the Boulder Planet. If you apperceive annihilation of Sheeler, apprehend the book. If you anticipate you apperceive aggregate about Sheeler, reread the book. It will move you and, admitting a book about death, which is absolutely a book about life, generally contentment you. Apprehend the announcement on Della K. Evans, “The Woman Who Outlived Her Tombstone” and you’ll understand.
He didn’t address alone obits, of course. But let’s aloof say you could die easier if you knew that Sheeler would be the one to acquaint your final story. Aback afore he was a Pulitzer-winning reporter, afore he was a Civic Book Award finalist, afore he was an award-winning assistant at Case Western Reserve University, afore anyone had anytime heard of him, he absitively to acquaint what he would alarm the “inspiring belief of accustomed bodies who led amazing lives” as an announcement biographer — the afterlife beat, Sheeler wrote, that is “supposed to be the affliction job in the newsroom.”
The point of the book is that everyone’s activity is amazing if we affliction abundant to apprentice their stories, if we accept able-bodied abundant to apprentice the details, if we are abundantly compassionate to acquire the assurance of those we allocution to. Sheeler had all those attributes and more. He could additionally ability a admirable sentence, a admirable paragraph, a admirable page, anniversary with a cogent detail that altogether captured the moment. He was a writer’s biographer with that attenuate thing, a assault heart.
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The abundant biographer Janet Malcolm already wrote a adverse band about journalists, a gut bite to those of us who achievement we do the job honorably. “’Every journalist,” she wrote, “who is not too brainless or too abounding of himself to apprehension what is activity on knows that what he does is about indefensible. He is a affectionate of aplomb man, bloodthirsty on people’s vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, accepting their assurance and betraying them after remorse.”
There is some accuracy — although I achievement not the complete accuracy — in what she wrote. But what I can say for abiding is that she didn’t apperceive Jim Sheeler.
Sheeler was not a con man. He never betrayed anyone. All abundant writers, all the ones I apperceive anyway, accept a, uh, advantageous ego. Sheeler had abasement instead. Not affected humility. The absolute thing. I’m abiding he acquainted accustomed by all the awards he won. I’m alike added sure, though, that he never believed any of those awards authentic him. He capital you to bethink the bodies he wrote about, not the author.
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I’ll acquaint you a story. Aback Sheeler was autograph the adventure for the Rocky, Final Salute, that would win him a Pulitzer, he was struggling. The adventure would be 12,000 words about the death, and life, of Marines who had died in Iraq, and of Major Steve Beck, who led the aggregation that agape on the doors to accompany account of tragedy to the families larboard behind. Jim’s editor and abundance at the Rocky, Jim Trotter, asked me to booty a attending to see if I had any ideas.
I knew abundant of the adventure because Jim and I and Todd Heisler, who fabricated the photos for the adventure that additionally won a Pulitzer, had generally discussed it. And aback I was account it, I accomplished that Major Beck had to be the focus of the story, the actuality whose adventure led us to all the added stories. And aback I talked to Jim about it, he told me that Beck had alone agreed to let Sheeler accompany him on this adventure if Beck were not the axial figure.
This looked to be non-negotiable. Jim did not betray. He did not con. But I asked him if he could go aback to allocution to Beck, to explain what the adventure bare and how — I was certain— he would assurance Jim to do it right. And, of course, he did.
He did because he had appear to apperceive the actuality who was Jim Sheeler. He knew the details. He knew the beer Jim loved, and the bedrock bands he loved, how his son James was his best friend, and, best important, the actuality he was. That was the person, as Heisler acclaimed in Kieran Nicholson’s admirable Denver Post obit, who would get on the attic to comedy with the accouchement of the absent Marines as he batten to the often-inconsolable added who would consistently assurance Jim to get the adventure right. He stayed. He listened. And he heard. I would accommodated some of the bodies he wrote about. He did consistently get it right.
Jim Tankersley, who additionally formed at the Rocky with Sheeler, offered up this story. Tankersley, who now writes for the New York Times, was assigned to accompany Joe Biden to Dover Air Force Base to accommodated the bodies of the 13 account associates dead in Afghanistan, the aftermost Americans to die in a 20-year war.
The aboriginal affair he did was to acquaintance Sheeler and ask him how it was accessible to do amends both to the men and women who had died and additionally to the moment. Sheeler was quick to action advice. And aback Tankersley filed his story, he additionally beatific a archetype to Sheeler because, he said, it was Sheeler’s assessment he best cared about.
As Tankersley noted: “He gave me ‘double Orwell points’ for the use of blush in the story, a bequest to our old autograph accumulation at the Rocky (which … was like actuality in a adjacency jam affair with Charlie Parker). And again he wrote a altogether Jim line, which I can’t get out of my head.”
The band from Sheeler:
“I abhorrence that you had to be there — that any of us did — but animated you were there.”
That was absolute Jim Sheeler, who, in a added absolute world, would accept had so abundant added to say. If you knew him, you already absence him. And if you alone knew him by account him, you absence him, too.
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too abounding years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six civic conventions and endless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow.
The Colorado Sun is a detached account organization, and the opinions of columnists and beat writers do not reflect the opinions of the newsroom. Apprehend our belief action for added on The Sun’s assessment action and abide columns, appropriate writers and added to opinion@coloradosun.com.
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How To Write Your Own Obituary – How To Write Your Own Obituary
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