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It was “the obituary that defined the course of my life,” Bernstein says. “I thought, ‘Wow! You can have fun with journalism, even obituaries.’ Later, I read the Associated Press version, which was dull and routine. I thought, ‘Gee, if I’d read the AP version instead of the Times’, I never would have gone into obituary writing’.” Then one of the Post’s obituary writers died, and Bernstein applied for the position. “I leapt at it,” he says.“They put me through about 12 interviews, but I got the job.” The favorite so far among the obituaries he has written is that of Edward von Kloberg III, a powerful lobbyist who committed suicide by leaping from a tower in 2005. The story began: “As part of Washington’s image machinery for more than two decades, Edward von Kloberg III did his best to sanitize some of the late 20th century’s most notorious dictators as they sought favors and approval from U.S. officials.” In 2008, Bernstein was promoted to obituary editor; he oversees a staff of three or four writers. “The Post policy,” he explains, “is that we have to have an obit for every person in the Washington area as long as they’ve lived here 20 years or more. Which means that we’re writing three-inch stories about church volunteers and 100-inch stories about national figures. It’s an enormous volume.” Writing obituaries, he says, is “no longer the province of has-beens and drunks, the old stereotypes. But at times, it can feel a little vicarious. For the most part, you’re not interviewing living people, you’re writing about them after the fact.” And as in other parts of the news business, obituary writers must keep on their toes. “The worst thing you can be,” he says, “is not prepared when a major figure dies. Look at the Michael Jackson scenario. I guess one could have predicted that he had a fatal lifestyle, and we should have had an obituary ready, but we’re so busy thinking about very accomplished people in their 90s that somebody in his 50s doesn’t always get on the radar.”
In the mid1990s,
his parents had sent him
The New York Times’ account of the life and death of Harold C. Fox, described by the Times as the man credited with creating, as the newspaper put it,
“the zoot suit with the reet pleat, the reave sleeve, the ripe stripe, the stuff cuff and the drape shape that was the stage rage during the boogiewoogie rhyme time of the early 1940’s.” Bernstein, the son of Richard Bernstein M.D. ’64, Chief Medical Officer of the Visiting Nurse Service of New York, is married to Marina Walker Guevara, a native of Argentina, who is an award-winning investigative reporter for the nonprofit Center for Public Integrity. As deputy director of its International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, she has written on a wide range of subjects, from cigarette smuggling to courts and human rights. The couple has a two-year-old son, Santiago. And although he calls being the Post’s
obituary editor “the best job I can imagine,” there is still the problem with new people. It is, he says, “like going to a party and telling someone you’re a doctor or a lawyer – you’re always getting consulted in one way or another. Sometimes the people who want to talk with me are even angling for a better ‘take’ on their life when the time comes!” TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT ADAM BERNSTEIN’S OBITUARIES IN THE WASHINGTON POST AND HOW THEY WERE WRITTEN, VISIT HTTP:// BLOG.WASHINGTONPOST.COM/POSTMORTEM/
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