Editor’s Note: The following is excerpted from Native Texan: Stories from Deep in the Heart, a collection of former Texas Observer editor Joe Holley’s columns out this July from Trinity University Press. The material is reprinted with permission of TU Press and the Houston Chronicle. This excerpt consists of an abridged version of the book’s introduction followed by one of the columns.
Among my various duties as a staff writer at the Washington Post, I often wrote obituaries. The Post, along with the New York Times and Los Angeles Times, was among the few newspapers that still took obituaries seriously, treating them as legitimate news stories, minibiographies of people whose lives made a difference. During my time there I wrote obits of prominent politicians, artists, entertainers, athletes, and business figures as well as crooks and common folks. I especially enjoyed writing about the latter, whose unsung lives often were just as fascinating as those we were accustomed to seeing in the media. It’s just that no one had thought to ask about them until they had passed on.
