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  • 2008-08-20 (xsd:date)
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  • Death May Not Be Proud, But It Is Honest (en)
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  • Most newspaper obituaries adhere to one of a handful of set formulas that incorporate listing the name of the deceased, date of passing, predeceasing and surviving relatives, and where and when services will be held. Some deviate from this standard by providing additional information about the departed, information that is almost always of a laudatory nature. However, every now and again one encounters a written send-off that is far from the expected loving expression of facts about the person who died. Such was the case with the obituary of Dolores Aguilar. The obit for this 79-year-old woman ran on 16 and 17 August 2008 in the Vallejo [California] Times-Herald. It was placed by one of the deceased's many daughters: According to John Bogert of the Daily Breeze (a newspaper based in the South Bay area of Los Angeles), Dolores Aguilar's daughter was moved to place the notice after reviewing the obituary of a co-worker's father and noting as she read through it how little any of it fit her mother. What struck me was how my mother was none of the things I was reading. She was never there for us, she was never good and she left no legacy. So how could I say any of the usual things about her? said the daughter to Bogert. She and her siblings, she maintained, were kept unfed, poorly clothed and completely terrorized. Before agreeing to run the unusual obituary, the Times-Herald took the additional step of requesting a copy of the death certificate, just to ensure that what they were being asked to publish wasn't a hoax. It wasn't: the woman being memorialized had passed away on 7 August 2008. On 10 September 2013, the Reno Gazette-Journal published a similar obituary (in both its print and online versions) for Marianne Theresa Johnson-Reddick, who had passed away at the age of 78 and was described in her obit as having neglected and abused her small children and lived an evil and violent life: Johnson-Reddick's unusual obituary quickly garnered national attention, and the Gazette-Journal published a follow-up article explaining its origins: (en)
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