New West Book Review

Jim Sheeler’s “Obit” Brings Life to Dead Westerners

By Peggy Lowe, 9-10-07

OBIT. Inspiring Stories of Ordinary People who Led Extraordinary Lives
By Jim Sheeler
Pruett Publishing Co.
242 pages, $24.95

You figure you know what you’re going to get when you pick up a book called OBIT. Inspiring Stories of Ordinary People who Led Extraordinary Lives.  But don’t let the title of this charming collection fool you.

Instead, take heart as early as Page 3, within the story of Edward Mallory, a Colorado chemist who roamed the Rocky Mountains for more than 30 years.

“He saw things you couldn’t see,” said Mallory’s wife (“How to Build a Mountain”).

The same can be said for Jim Sheeler, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Denver journalist who wrote the stories in this recently published book. While Sheeler’s rich, nuanced narratives bring to life, well, dead people, they are so much more. This book remembers and mourns the passing of a certain Western generation, those post-World War II folks who either moved here or grew up here and populated what beloved Western writer Wallace Stegner called “the geography of hope.”

Warren Conner’s obituary (“Appreciating Values in Aspen”) tells the story of one of the last mining family members who lived in the cottages that became the Victorian backdrop for the international high-flying ski resort. William Lyman Davies’ quest to build a stainless steel roadside diner (“The Cowboy on the Roof”) chronicles a time when the “Western motif”—a neon-cowboy sign bearing a two-foot-wide smile – was cool and has since become kitsch. The tale of Lois Engel’s life (“Living in the Blink”), told by her son while walking amid the dry wheat fields, abandoned train depot and old cottonwood trees, is really the obituary of the small farm town of Agate, Colo.

All gone. And now, all remembered, in Sheeler’s fine journalism from daily newspapers. Sheeler wrote these stories while working for the Boulder Planet, the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News. A confession here: I was a fellow reporter at the Rocky and always voted for Sheeler in the “best writer” category at each year’s Christmas party. I didn’t regret my votes during the reading of this collection.

If I have a beef with this book, it’s the title. I don’t believe these people lived extraordinary lives – unless you consider a sugar beet farmer who plays the harmonica with his nose to have a fabulous existence. Rather, these are stories of ordinary people who lived lives much like our parents or grandparents, with Sheeler offering us the charm of the everyday and the grieving relatives retelling of stories that must have been told a million times before. You’ve probably heard stories like how Nick Papadakis met his bride-to-be in the toy department at the J.C. Penney (“One Empty Seat at the Deli”), of how farmer Robert E. McClelland liked to say he was “outstanding in his field,” (“The Life of the Carousel”) and how Keith Hagler “spoke horse” (“The Man Who Spoke Horse”). You’ve just never heard them written this well.

With “The Barflies Say Goodbye,” Sheeler is himself a fly-on-the-wall, using that old writer’s adage – show, don’t tell – to describe the passing of Patricia J. Wagster, a bartender at Moose Lodge No. 2166 in Northglenn, Colo.  A short conversation reveals a wealth of information about her and the people in her life:

At a table to the side of the bar, a man nicknamed Stub sits near a woman nicknamed Bubba. “Stub” Foley runs the Moose Lodge. “Bubba” Gresham is the secretary.

“She had a way about her that made everyone like her,” Stub says.

“She always thought a lot of you,” Bubba says.

“I thought a lot of her,” Stub says.

“She called me up one day and told me she’d need a little time off, because they told her she had cancer,” Stub says. “That was a bad, bad day for us. She fought that all the way through. She fought real hard; she wouldn’t give up.”

“Pat wasn’t one to give up,” Bubba says.

They look over to the bar, where the Wagster daughters are hugging people.

“She raised those kids by herself. That’s not an easy life,” Stub says.

“No, that wouldn’t be an easy life,” says Kitty Foley, Stub’s wife, who sits nearby.

Rumor around the bar said it was the Foleys who paid the lot rent on Pat’s trailer. When the question comes up, they avoid it.

“The place just took care of her,” Stub says. “When she got in trouble, we came together to help her.”

Sheeler breathes new life into the old newspaper fixture of obituaries, adding street reporting and deft writing touches. In this wretched age of newspaper cutbacks and “paid obituaries” (“the bastard offspring of a newspaper business that has lost its way,” as a commenter recently said on the media industry website Poynter).

“The death beat is supposed to be the worst job in the newsroom. For those of us who understand, it’s journalism’s best kept secret – a place of raw emotion and endless wisdom, a place where you find lessons of life more brilliant than anything you’ll ever find from the traditionally designated “noteworthy” people who usually appear in the rest of the newspaper,” Sheeler writes in the introduction.

Thankfully, Sheeler and his editors are among those who understand and he has been celebrated for some of his best work. Last year, Sheeler and Rocky photographer Todd Heisler each won the Pulitzer Prize for their series called “Final Salute.” The two followed a Marine major who was charged with “death notification,” telling families that they had lost their kin in the Iraq war.

A book based on “Final Salute” is scheduled for publication on Memorial Day 2008 by The Penguin Press. I hope this story is included in that work, as it’s one of the most powerful pieces I’ve read in a long time. (Warning: you may want to save the reading of that story for home, as I did, because I think crying and melting mascara is unsightly in the workplace.)

The best piece in OBIT is the last one, “The Shortest Obituary on the Page.” Sheeler pieces together the story of Johnny Richardson, a Denver shoeshine man, finding his grave and even tracking down Richardson’s former sweetheart, Karen, whose photos were found in what Sheeler describes as Richardson’s “shoe box estate.” From what could be thought of as an anonymous life, Sheeler finds great color, depth and personality.

“We’re just old dinosaurs. People forget about us,” (Richardson friend Frederick) Moon says. “But we did contribute.”

Yes, they did contribute. And thanks to Sheeler, we won’t forget.

Peggy Lowe is a former Denver reporter now working in Southern California.

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