A Trove of Words to Remember From a Master Obituary Writer (original) (raw)
Media|A Trove of Words to Remember From a Master Obituary Writer
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/06/business/media/robert-mcfadden-retirement.html
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The byline of Robert D. McFadden, who retired on Sunday, has been one of the most distinguished in the history of The Times. Here is a sampler of his artful obituaries.
A few of the many subjects of Robert D. McFadden’s obituaries over the years. Top row, from left: William Klein, Regis Philbin and Gloria Vanderbilt. Bottom row, from left: Roger W. Wilkins, Joan Rivers and Don Imus.Credit...William Klein, via Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York, Karsten Moran for The New York Times, Cecil Beaton/Condé Nast, via Getty Images, Charles Tasnadi/Associated Press, Ruth Fremson/ The New York Times, and Richard Drew/Associated Press
Published Sept. 6, 2024Updated Jan. 31, 2025
The byline Robert D. McFadden has been one of the most distinguished in the history of The New York Times, one that has been affixed to hundreds upon hundreds of exactingly reported and artfully composed pieces since Bob joined the newspaper 63 years ago, beginning a Times career remarkable not just for its craftsmanship and productivity but also for its longevity. He retired on Sunday at 87.
Bob first achieved distinction as a “rewrite man,” a reporter who would take on some of the biggest breaking-news stories of the day — a jetliner crash, a historic blackout, the destruction of the World Trade Center — without leaving his newsroom desk.
Reporters in the field covering an event would feed him reams of information, and he would take it all down, a telephone receiver cradled against one ear, his fingers flying across the keys of a typewriter and later a computer keyboard. Then he’d funnel the information — it could never be too much — into a sweeping account full of detail, color, voices and drama. His rewrite prowess was recognized with a Pulitzer Prize in 1996.
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Mr. McFadden, foreground, worked as a rewrite man at The Times by candlelight during the 1977 New York blackout.
But he had a second act in store, as an obituary writer. For the last decade or more, Bob chronicled hundreds of consequential lives, some famous and some less so. Even there he was singular, however, because his mission was to write about people not after they died, the usual sequence, but while they still lived. He wrote their obituaries in advance, each deeply researched, thoroughly reported and fluidly written. Then he’d file them away, sometimes for years, until they were finally needed, when death came knocking.
These were luminous portraits, placing people on a broader historical canvas but never losing sight of the often revealing particulars that complete the picture, that render any life as unlike any other.
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