This week we said goodbye to slain officer Charles Joseph Gliniewicz. He was laid to rest on September 11, 2015. Racecar driver Justin Wilson was also laid to rest. In other news, we learned of a brave family who called out their daughter’s heroin addiction in her obituary and heard about cryonics patients who are hoping to be revived in the future.
Weekly News 9/12/15: “G.I. Joe” Gliniewicz laid to rest.
Cryonics patients hope to beat death
9/12/15–bostonglobe.com: In the moments just before Kim Suozzi died of cancer in Arizona at age 23, it fell to her boyfriend, Josh Schisler, to follow through with the plan to freeze her brain.As her pulse monitor sounded its alarm and her breath grew ragged, he fumbled for his phone. Fighting emotion, he alerted the cryonics team waiting nearby and called the hospice nurses to come pronounce her dead. Any delay would jeopardize the chance to maybe, someday, resurrect her mind… Read the full story
Retired Korean spreads joy with funeral photographs
9/11/2015–aljazeera.com: Kim Kwang-ahn, a former construction company executive, has turned his life-long hobby of photography into a meaningful job in his post-retirement life. Last year, the 78 year old started to take portraits of elderly people to be used for their funeral, perhaps documenting the final chapter in their lives, for free, in a park in downtown Seoul… Read the full story
Hundreds of officers attend funeral for Illinois lieutenant
9/11/15–sfgate.com: Several hundred police officers from around the country attended a funeral Monday for a suburban Chicago lieutenant shot and killed last week, and residents of the area turned out by the thousands to watch the hearse go by. Charles Joseph Gliniewicz, who was 52 and on the cusp of retirement after more than 30 years with the Fox Lake Police Department, was shot and killed shortly after he radioed in that he was chasing three suspicious men on foot… Read the full story
Funeral for IndyCar driver Justin Wilson held in English village
Funeral for IndyCar driver Justin Wilson held in English village9/10/15–foxsports.com: The daring moves and steely determination of Justin Wilson were remembered at the IndyCar driver’s funeral in an English village on Thursday, three weeks after his fatal accident during a race… Read the full story
>Related:Family, friends mourn IndyCar driver Justin Wilson during funeral
NBC throws words into hat, comes up with “musical funeral-home soap”
9/10/2015–avclub.com: In what would be a crazy idea by most standards, but a great idea by NBC standards, the network is developing a musical primetime soap about a funeral home. Deadline reports that About A Boy and Smash writer Julia Brownell is creating the show, with backing from producers Jason Katims (Boy, Parenthood), and Craig Zadan and Neil Meron (Smash, The Wiz). The hour-long show is “inspired by” a real-life funeral parlor in a rough area of Los Angeles, whose funeral services “feature music blaring from the hearse and pallbearers dressed in top hats and tails dancing the casket down the church aisle… Read the full story
‘Dying to Talk’ N.H. radio show to focus on death
9/10/15–fosters.com: Most people avoid talking about death and funerals, but one New Hampshire funeral director is hosting a weekly radio talk show on the subject.”Dying to Talk” is making its debut from 8:30 a.m. to 9 a.m. Saturday on 107.7 FM. It will be rebroadcast at 6:30 a.m. Sunday… Read the full story
Holographic Eulogies Will Allow You to Speak at Your Own Funeral
Holographic Eulogies Will Allow You to Speak at Your Own Funeral9/9/15–inverse.com: Carl Minardo, president of AIM Holographics, believes that baby boomers will be reluctant to give up the stage — even after they’re dead and gone. Minardo would know, he’s a boomer himself and a self-taught funeral expert. Offering his holographic eulogy recording services to funeral homes across the country, Minardo believes that the dream of living on through tech will resonate with the millions of baby boomers now facing their own mortality, and he’s here to help make it happen… Read the full story
More grieving families turn to crowdfunding to pay for funeral expenses
9/9/2015–abcactionnews.com: Too often we report on sudden deaths in our community. With the average funeral costing nearly $9,000, often times grieving families turn to crowdfunding to cover the cost. On Go Fund Me alone, $40 million has been raised to date to pay for funerals, memorial and tributes all over the country… Read the full story
China’s funeral revolutionaries
9/8/15–theguardian.com: Wang Dan is a genial 34-year-old man with a soft, bulldog-like face and a quiet enthusiasm for the next thing coming. His heroes were forged in garages, dorm rooms and cheap flats. They are the Chinese strivers who have transformed Beijing into a city of startup dreams – entrepreneurs such as Robin Li, who rose from peasant roots to found the search giant Baidu, and Jack Ma, the former English teacher who founded the internet trading company Alibaba. Now, they’re both worth billions. Wang was inspired by their stories. They taught him to think big… Read the full story
Couple calls out heroin overdose in daughter’s obituary
9/7/15–khou.com: Confronted with the sudden death of their 18-year-old daughter, Fred and Dorothy McIntosh Shuemake made a defiant decision: they would not worry about any finger-pointing, whispers or family stigma. They directed the funeral home to begin Alison Shuemake’s obituary by stating flatly that she died “of a heroin overdose.” They aren’t the first grieving American parents to cite heroin in an obituary as such deaths nearly quadrupled nationally over a decade, but it’s rare, even in a southwest Ohio community headed toward another record year in heroin-related deaths… Read the full story
