Nearly everyone reads the paper, at least scans the front page, local news and sports, but some actually study the obit page. The obituaries chronicle not just the rich and famous, but also the lives ...

Did you catch the news about the golfer who died of a stroke? How about the librarian who checked out? Or the math teacher whose number was up? They've heard them all on newspaper obituary desks. Once ...

It’s been less than two weeks. Posterboards from the wake, covered with hundreds of photographs of a smiling Robbie Goodell, still sit in the immaculate, dimly lit living room of the family’s ...

Dear Abby: A few months ago, you had a letter in your column from “Long Islander,” who wrote: “The first thing I look for in my newspaper is the obituary column, and when the cause of death is cancer, ...

Even when I travel, I buy a newspaper wherever I stop or stay and immediately turn to the obits to read about people I've never known. The habit began when I had to write my mother's obituary in 2000.

Marilyn Johnson clearly loves obituaries. She shadows them daily in U.S. and British newspapers and on Web sites maintained by fellow obit devotees. Is this obsessive? Maybe. But obituaries, done well ...