Today in the Archives, Dusty D was working on obituaries. We have a large box filled with 5 by 8-inch manila envelopes. These envelopes come from the old Ann Arbor News clippings archives, which was kindly donated to us. Each envelope contains clipped and dated obituaries. In some envelopes it's just one tiny notice; others have whole pads of clippings. For each person, I wrote their name and death date in the top left side of an index card. If the obituary is small, it is glue-sticked directly onto the card. If it is large, it's shrunken down on the copier first and then added. When dry, the index cards are filed in our Obituary File Cabinet, which contains about 73,000 obituary cards.Though the front Archives room was quiet, with the only sound the U-M/EMU football game on the radio and our intern clicking his mouse 20 feet away, I was reading accounts of car crashes, suicides, a heroin overdose, and other dark and violent stories.
This one from 1969, however, just struck me as sad. In the first clip an 11-year-old Shalto Jacobs is profiled in a "Young People Going Places" feature. "He would like to become a lawyer when he grows up and defend people. Basketball, his favorite sport in the winter months, fills a temporary gap for the youngster who enjoys building models as a hobby." Shalto's smile is innocent and confident.
The second story details his drowning "in the lake at Woodland Hills Dr. and Scenic Lake Dr."
"When [the boys swimming] got within 15 feet of the shore, Jacobs stopped, yelled, and sank beneath the surface. He did not reappear."
The third article details his funeral the next day. "Jacobs would have been a June 12 graduate of the Ypsilanti High School."
When working on obituaries, once in a while you have to take a break.
