I have felt forced to write four obituaries so far. Two are covered in tomorrows blog. These obituaries, in today's blog, were for close friends for whom I felt the published obituaries were inadequate.
One was for my close friend and co-author Ernest Callenbach. Chick as he was known had his obituary written by his beloved wife and a few friends. His wife influenced what was written about the parts of Chicks life that were important to her. That included his love of Buffalos, a particular book he wrote about a whale that swam up the Sacramento River and was a big seller.
His wife and friends, in the official obituary, played down four things of great importance.
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Chick wrote a very successful novel that was a hippie favorite which emphasized the environmental world and made Chick a leader in that world. Ecotopia.
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Chick wrote a book on simple living, which was excellent, but was inappropriate for his wife and was not mentioned in the obituary.
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Chick was a founder of Film Quarterly and his role was downplayed.
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Most importantly to me, Chick was my co-author on the first book about random selection of legislators. Historically this is an important book with global ramifications and it has had great history since its publication.
Fortunately wikipedia has a good summary of Chick’s working life.
A very close friend and lover, Annie Styron, married for a second time late in her life to a prominent author, George Leonard.
In her public obituaries her life begins with her marriage to George. That was the Annie who George knew and his friends knew. They were the people who wrote her obituary.
Annie had started organizations in the environmental movement and played an important role in the hippie world, all of which was ignored in the published obituaries by her friends from her late in life marriage. Here is the obituary I added about Annie.