Will you be remembered for your love of triple word scores?
How will you be remembered? Will it be for your love of spelling and triple word scores? It could be. When summing up a loved one’s life in an obituary, countless families have included their late loved ones’ passion for playing Scrabble. Some obits even elaborate on the Scrabble player’s devotion to the word-puzzle board game.
For example, Terry Oblander, who had been a reporter for three northeast Ohio daily newspapers. Terry learned at a young age that “he could instantly unscramble words,” his fellow reporter Grant Segall wrote in the news obituary published in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “He won many Scrabble tournaments over the years and organized a few.” Segall added: “For the past 10 years, he tickled Plain Dealer readers six days a week with Public Squares, a puzzle of scrambled words and homegrown puns.” The obituary written by Oblander’s family also mentions his love for Scrabble and other word games.
Jean A. Carol was “a nationally ranked championship Scrabble player and inveterate traveler who especially enjoyed Scrabble cruises, including to the Galapagos Islands, through the Panama Canal, to Australia and New Zealand, to Scandinavia, and to the Greek Islands.” According to her obituary in the Rochester (New York) Democrat and Chronicle, the Cincinnati native was “ranked as the top player in the state of Ohio for many years.”
Rose Romanow taught various languages at the elementary and secondary levels over 45 years. She also “could beat anyone in Scrabble, spell every word in the English language, solve all crossword puzzles put in front of her, and had a true passion for and understanding of classical music, opera, musicals, and live performances,” according to her obit published in Heritage newspapers of Michigan.
The brief obit in the Los Angeles Times for Suzanne “Susie” Page said little more than she was an “international cat show judge and author and a member of the North American Scrabble Players Association.” Enough said.
This post was contributed by Alana Baranick, a freelance obituary writer. She was the director of the Society of Professional Obituary Writers and chief author of Life on the Death Beat: A Handbook for Obituary Writers before she passed away in 2015.
