Letter from Charlotte Observer managing editor Cheryl Carpenter, nominating
Gerry’s award-winning work.
Gerry Hostetler, The Charlotte Observer
To the judges:
Several times a week, Gerry Hostetler offers a gift to grieving families: She memorializes their loved ones in her obituary column, It’s a Matter of Life. All told, she’s offered close to 2,500 gifts
in her career at The Charlotte Observer, and therefore I’m happy to nominate her for the Lifetime Achievement award from the Society of Professional Obituary Writers.
Of course, it is not just loved ones who praise Gerry: It’s our readers who three-times-a-week get a warm reminder that Charlotte is filled with good, intriguing people.
Gerry began her career in the field 30 years ago, when she came to work at the Observer as an obituary clerk. This was a second career for her. She had long dreamed of being a writer and was going to do what it took to get her foot in the door of a newspaper.
Over the years that she worked as an obit clerk, she regularly dealt with grieving families and always felt like those who had died deserved more than the basic obituary told in formal, distant language. And, she often thought that the regular folks of Charlotte deserved to have their stories told like the more famous ones.
So, in 1991, she pitched the idea of doing a regular obituary column for the Observer - and I promptly turned her down. No space, I said. She kept lobbying and finally, one of our zoned section editors gave her a shot.
One of Gerry's columns described the subject so aptly that she and the description appeared in Mark Ethridge's "Grievances," (New South Books, 2006) a fact-based novel.
She wrote:
“His voice came from the bottom of a pit all the way up through the gravel, and by the time it hit your ears, it had settled into a low growl. He smoked like a chimney, had the build of a squat bulldog and the face of a washboard road. That was John York, Reporter with a capital R. Cop beat. Just the facts. Right now.
“If he had a motto, it had to have been, ‘Don't waste my time with bull.’
“John David York, retired Charlotte Observer reporter and columnist, died of a blood infection Monday, January 20 at age 78.”
As you probably have guessed, she was a hit. (She even appeared on the Today show at one point as obituary writing gained stature in newsrooms.)
I sure hope Gerry remembers this moment, because I do. I told her I was wrong about her obit column. It was popular and important, and I had misjudged the impact she would have with it. We gave her column a more prominent spot in the main run of the paper - and upped it to three times a week.
Gerry developed a style, a style that paints her subjects in a golden light, showing what made them special to those who knew them. And now, she writes one of the paper’s most popular features. Her articles hang on refrigerators, and in restaurants and get inserted in Bibles across the Charlotte region.
Instead of telling you the impact, here are some comments from Gerry’s legion of fans:
“Your column is a refreshing and very human link to people who make our neighborhoods, our cities, and our country kinder and gentler places in which to live.... The brief stories of their lives, which you sketch out for us all to read day after day, are an inspiration and give quiet, unassuming people the honor and recognition they so richly deserve,” wrote one.
She even gets compliments from other journalists who find themselves dealing with a death: “Since beginning a career in journalism 57 years ago, I have felt an obituary page need not be simply a repository for the statistical stacking of the recently deceased. In the hands of a gifted writer like Gerry Hostetler, it can become a canvas for fine portraits. Ms. Hostetler illustrated this beautifully with the perceptive and poignant masterpiece she did of my granddaughter,” wrote a retired North Carolina newspaper editor.
And while it's not an official part of the contest, I have to tell you another side of Gerry: She’s the person who welcomes visitors to our newsroom in her “spare” time. She sits by the entrance and always is quick with a greeting (and usually a joke) for people passing by. In many ways, she’s in the heart of the newsroom.
But mostly she touches people she never met with stories that transcend the ordinary newspaper story. And, for many, her work will live on forever. We hope you honor her.
Sincerely yours,
Cheryl Carpenter
Managing Editor
Charlotte Observer
Ms. Hostetler; Thank you for the special tribute to my sister as expressed in your wonderful writing! Your talent for extending the personal memories of so many Charlotteans’ lost ones is truly a gift from God. We will treasure this contribution of your appreciation of Lena's life. Your review is a “value-added” record of Lena’s service and humanity. Thank you for the time and talent you gave us.
Elizabeth M.,
Charlotte, NC