Writing and Publishing Obituaries Through Penwell Gabel
Most people think obituaries are just a formal notice that someone died. They are, but at Penwell Gabel in Kansas City they tend to be treated more like a curated legacy document, especially when the person being remembered was involved in law or civic work. If you are trying to get an obituary written and published through their process, here is how it actually works, what goes into it, and where things commonly fall apart. Penwell Gabel is a full-service funeral home with locations across the Kansas City metro. They have handled funerals for judges, city council members, prominent attorneys, nonprofit founders, and civic organizers for decades. Their obituary process is not fundamentally different from most funeral homes, but they have developed a reputation for producing longer, more detailed pieces than the standard newspaper death notice. That distinction matters because it affects how you prepare. The basic workflow starts with the family or the estate contact filling out a intake form after the death certificate is filed. You can do this online, by phone, or in person at one of their facilities on Brooklyn Avenue or in Overland Park. They assign a funeral director who becomes your point of contact. From there the obituary is drafted, reviewed with the family, and then submitted for publication.
The timeline is usually five to ten business days from the date of death to publication, depending on how fast the family responds to drafts. I have seen cases where it dragged out to three weeks because multiple cousins were arguing over what should be included. That is not a Penwell Gabel problem. That is a family dynamics problem. Their team will move as fast as you give them clear information. When it comes to the actual writing, you have two paths. You can ask the funeral home to draft the obituary from the information you provide, which is what most families do. Or you can submit a finished piece yourself. Both are accepted. The funeral home will still do a light edit on anything they draft to make sure it meets the standards of the publications they are submitting to. For legal and civic leaders, the content tends to include specific career milestones, bar associations, judicial appointments, elected offices held, notable cases or legislation, civic organizations served on, and military service when applicable. These details matter because the target publications like the Kansas City Star, Law Week Kansas City, and various specialty journals have different requirements and different audiences. A single obituary text rarely fits all of them perfectly. You often need adapted versions.
Here is a practical problem I ran into with a client last year. The family wanted the obituary published in both the Kansas City Star and in a niche legal publication focused on Kansas judicial history. The Star required a certain format and length, roughly 300 to 400 words, and charged by the line or by the word depending on the package. The legal publication wanted a longer, more technical version that emphasized the deceased's rulings and professional contributions, something closer to 800 words. I took the longer legal version and condensed it for the Star submission. Then I expanded the Star version slightly with additional case citations for the legal outlet. That approach worked. The alternative would have been paying for two separate full drafts from the funeral home's writing staff, which costs significantly more. The cost side is something people often overlook. Obituaries at Penwell Gabel are not free, but they are not wildly expensive either. A standard print obituary in the Kansas City Star runs anywhere from a few hundred dollars to over a thousand depending on length and placement. Adding online publication through their memorial website is usually included in funeral package pricing. If you want a full page or a photo-heavy layout in a specific newspaper, the price jumps. I recommend getting a written estimate before you commit, because the sales team will naturally push the more elaborate options and it is easy to say yes without understanding what you are paying for. There are also some common pitfalls. One is assuming the obituary is final once it prints. It is not. Most newspapers allow corrections for a small fee if you catch errors like misspelled names of surviving family members or incorrect dates. Penwell Gabel will help with that process, but you need to catch the error quickly, ideally within 24 hours of publication. Another pitfall is including too much information that belongs in a eulogy or a memorial program. The obituary is a public record piece meant to inform and summarize. The eulogy is for the service itself. Mixing them tends to produce a bloated obituary that loses readability.
Get the Full Details
For families of legal and civic leaders, I usually recommend preparing a timeline document before you even start talking to the funeral home about the obituary. List every significant date, position held, award received, and major case or project. Keep it factual. Do not worry about tone yet. Just get the raw data organized. When you hand that to the writer, whether it is at Penwell Gabel or elsewhere, the draft comes back faster and with fewer rounds of revision. I have seen that step cut the revision cycle from four or five back-and-forths down to two. Sometimes the family does not want a traditional obituary at all. They prefer a memorial announcement or a celebratory life piece. Penwell Gabel accommodates that. The wording changes, the tone changes, but the submission process is essentially the same. If you go this route, make sure you tell the funeral director upfront so they do not write something in a somber register that the family then has to undo. One thing that catches people off guard is the distribution network. Penwell Gabel does not just publish where the family tells them to. They have established relationships with several regional and specialty publications. That can be an advantage if you want broader coverage. It can also be a disadvantage if you receive multiple submission confirmations from outlets you did not intend to use. Clarify your list before they send anything out. A simple email saying which publications are approved and which are not prevents that issue entirely.
If you need the obituary translated into another language, that is possible but it adds time. Spanish is the most common request in the Kansas City area. Penwell Gabel has access to translation services, but budget an extra few days and expect an additional fee. I have never seen a machine-translated obituary work well for this kind of content. The nuance around civic accomplishments and professional titles gets lost. Ask for a human translator if you go that route. Finally, there is the question of digital preservation. Once the obituary is published, it lives on the funeral home's website indefinitely unless you request removal. That is generally a good thing for people with public legacies. But if there is any sensitivity around what is included, negotiate the terms of digital retention before the piece goes live. A simple conversation with the funeral director can set expectations and avoid awkward situations years later.
