Obituarist won Pulitzer Prize for feature honouring America’s fallen troops
When Jim Sheeler started writing obituaries in 1996, the job was considered among the worst in journalism, a Siberia for wayward reporters. ‘‘I saw journalists at my own newspaper punished: ‘Obits for you for the next six months,’ ’’ he later recalled.
For Sheeler, the assignment was far from a chore. As he leafed through death notices faxed by local funeral homes, typing out obituaries for the Boulder Planet in Colorado, certain details would catch his eye. ‘‘There was one in particular that listed the woman’s occupation: florist and butcher,’’ he said. ‘‘I loved that, and I thought: ‘I wish I would have known her. I wish I could have written about her.’ And then I realised I still could.’’
Over the next few years, Sheeler wrote evocative, richly detailed obits of farmers, ranchers, magicians, restaurateurs – preferably anyone whose name had never appeared in print. Combining a lean, understated prose style with an insistence on patient, in-person reporting, he helped shake up the traditional obituary form and established himself as a leading chronicler of ordinary people.
‘‘If Nick Papadakis heard a joke at 11.30am,’’ he wrote in one obit, ‘‘everyone on Main St knew it by 1 o’clock, the punchline escorted by a deep belly laugh, powered by an unashamedly deep belly.’’ In another: ‘‘Agate, population seventy, is one of those towns that people describe as ‘blink and you’ll miss it’. Lois A. Engel loved living in the blink.’’
Sheeler’s obituary writing eventually took him to the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, where he wrote about the first Colorado natives to die in the Iraq War. He attended military funerals at Fort Logan National Cemetery, interviewing bereaved families and friends. But he also took in other details, like the way a gravedigger described a fellow Marine killed in action as ‘‘part of the family’’, and the way Marines took special care in standing guard over the casket.
Sheeler, who has died aged 53, went on to spend a year shadowing Marine Major Steve Beck, who was tasked with honouring his fallen comrades by delivering the news to their families, supervising funerals and helping them cope with their loss. The resulting article, ‘‘Final Salute’’, was a searing 12,000-word exploration of grief, sacrifice and brotherhood, with photographs by Todd Heisler. Both men were honoured with Pulitzer Prizes the next year, with Sheeler winning the feature-writing award.
Two years after winning the Pulitzer, Sheeler expanded ‘‘Final Salute’’ into a book of the same name, which became a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award in non-fiction.
James Expedite Robert Sheeler III was born in Houston, Texas. His father ran oil services companies and later became a rancher; his mother was a homemaker who filled her bookshelves with novels by Ernest Hemingway as well as Nora Roberts.
‘‘As a young boy, reading late at night with a flashlight under the covers, I revelled in stories of darkness and light,’’ Sheeler wrote in a biography for Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, where he had been a journalism professor since 2010.
His interest in journalism was sparked by a high school teacher in Houston, who showed him ‘‘that writing could be as rewarding as reading’’. He went on to write for the school newspaper at Colorado State University, from where he graduated in 1990, and received a masters degree in journalism from the University of Colorado in 2007.
He got his first reporting job at the Boulder Daily Camera in 1992. He later freelanced for the Denver Post, creating a Sunday obit feature, and co-wrote Life on the Death Beat ,a 2005 guide to newspaper obituary writing. Two years later he published Obit, a collection of his work.
‘‘I never complained about having my stories in the back of the newspaper,’’ he said, ‘‘because I knew that most of the front-page stories would be fish wrap in a few days, while the obits would be cut and pasted on refrigerators and scrapbooks and read for generations.’’
The cause of his death, at his home in Ohio, has not yet been determined. Survivors include his wife of 28 years, Annick Sauvageot; a son, and two sisters.
Sheeler said he often agonised over his stories, staying up all night to write and sometimes tucking his notebook under his pillow when he went to sleep. Final Salute was especially arduous: ‘‘It absolutely tore me up inside,’’ he told ReadDeadbeat, an obituary website. He started teaching at the University of Colorado while writing the book, and later invited Beck to speak to his classes at Case Western Reserve.
Beck, now retired from the Marines, recalled warning Sheeler and Heisler early on that their reporting would take its toll. ‘‘I said this is going to be one of the hardest things you’ve ever done. And they were willing to walk that walk. I could see over time that it was creating its own pains for them that they would have to carry. But they didn’t ever quit, and that’s a big thing for us as Marines.’’ – Washington Post