HELLO ANCHORAGE DAILY NEWS. ANYBODY HOME?

The Anchorage Daily News is now charging for obituaries. That’s one more burden for survivors. Obviously, the rich and famous (or infamous) will have the details of their life splashed all over the newspaper without cost. But many good people, and many of our loved ones, go through an entire lifetime, and will never have their name in the newspaper. Not once. Is a free reasonably sized public service obituary too much to ask from the state’s leading paper? Apparently it is.

A lot of us read the obituaries. I read them every day. If my name isn’t there, I go do something. For those of us who are genealogical detectives researching family history, obituaries are a wellspring of historical information. If people can't afford obituaries, information for future generations is lost.

Yes, merchants make money selling caskets, funeral flowers, and sometimes clergy and singers are paid honorariums. I understand that better than most. During my last year in college I worked as an embalmer’s assistant at Bring’s Mortuary in Tucson, Arizona (“When business was dead, that was good”). But couldn’t the Daily News contribute, as a public service (perhaps deductible?) at least a 350-word obituary, with a fee for any extra words?

As a woman said on TV, "I like to read about people's accomplishments and adventures. It's part of our community." Hello Anchorage Daily News. Is anyone home?