Writing one’s own obituary is nothing new, but it’s a topic rarely covered in newspapers today. Maybe that’s because local papers are dying off, and the ones still limping along barely pay their reporters enough to care about actual community news. I would know — I’m a digital news producer for four stations across three states. The pay is, well… let’s just say it’s not life-changing.
Anyway, here are five fascinating cases of people who wrote their own obituaries — some out of grim foresight, some out of obsessive precision, and one out of sheer guts.
1. Thinking Ahead
In 1909, a Kansas woman was so convinced she was about to die that she sat down and wrote her own obituary. A few days later, she passed away, and her self-written obituary was printed in all the local papers.
Source: The Barre Daily Times. Barre, Vt., 25 June 1909.
2. Ill for Several Weeks
Bennett Travis of Montana had been gravely ill for weeks in 1921. Convinced the end was near, he wrote out his own obituary and pinned it to the wall beside his bed. When he was later found dead in his cabin, the obituary was discovered — ready to print.
Source: The Daily Star-Mirror. Moscow, Idaho, 17 Dec. 1921.
3. Unsurprising Prediction
Aviator Tommy Gibbons, in his twenties, had made 499 parachute jumps when he wrote his own obituary in 1934. He described himself as having “dropped for the last time through the skies… a failure at last in his parachute jumping career.”
A year later, while performing at an air circus, Gibbons made his 500th jump. His parachute failed to open until just before he hit the ground. He died on impact.
Source: Evening Star. Washington, D.C., 23 Nov. 1935.
4. The Grammar Perfectionist
Dr. C.H. Preston of Iowa feared one thing more than death: someone writing his obituary incorrectly.
For years, he obsessed over the idea of a “brief and mangled death notice.” So, he took matters into his own hands and wrote the obituary himself — a grammatically flawless document later found among his papers.
Source: The Milwaukee Leader. Milwaukee, Wis., 23 May 1914.
5. Five Bullets and a Deadline
And finally, in 1937, a California man was shot five times during a heated newspaper feud. Bleeding out, he picked up the phone and reported his own shooting to a wire service — effectively writing his own obituary in real time.
Source: Henderson Daily Dispatch. Henderson, N.C., 31 March 1937.
