Writing an Obituary That Actually Works
I've been helping families write obituaries for about twelve years now, mostly through funeral homes in the Milwaukee area, and I've noticed the same mistakes over and over. Most people spend more time agonizing over the phrasing than they should. The process is straightforward once you stop treating it like a literary exercise. The biggest issue I see is that families either write too much or too little. You get these 800-word essays trying to capture every single detail of someone's life, and then the funeral home has to cut it down anyway. Or you get a single paragraph that lists a birth date and a handful of survivors, which leaves readers with no real sense of who the person was. There's a middle ground, and it's usually around 300 to 450 words for a standard newspaper placement.
Uecker Witt Obituaries Honoring A Life Preserving A Legacy
When you work with a funeral home like Uecker Witt, they typically have a structured obituary process. They provide a template or a questionnaire that asks for the essential details: full name, age, city of residence, date of death, surviving family members, predeceased relatives, biography highlights, service information, and where donations can be made. They also handle the submission to newspapers, which varies by publication and can get expensive fast. Here's the thing most people don't realize: the obituary you write for the funeral home isn't necessarily the same one that gets published. Funeral homes often have their own editorial style. They might trim your draft, reorganize sections, or swap out phrasing to match what they consider standard. If you have a specific version you want published, you need to communicate that clearly upfront. I had a case last year where a family spent three days crafting the perfect obituary, only for the funeral home to publish a significantly shortened version without telling them. They found out when their aunt called saying it looked nothing like what they'd approved. The workaround was simple but easy to miss. Always request a proof before publication. Any reputable funeral home will send you a draft for approval, but if they don't mention it, ask. Do it in writing so there's a record. This applies whether you're dealing with Uecker Witt or any other funeral service provider.
For the actual writing, start with the facts and build outward. Open with the full name, age, and location. Then state the date of death and optionally the cause if the family is comfortable with that. Move into a brief biographical section — where they were born, education, career, military service, hobbies, memberships. Then list the surviving family and those who predeceased them. End with service details and donation information. I keep a mental checklist I go through with every family. First, confirm the spelling of every name, especially for in-laws and step-relatives. Misspelled names in an obituary are the number one complaint I hear from grieving families when they read it later. Second, get the exact order of survivors right. The standard order is spouse, children, grandchildren, parents, siblings. Deviating from this without reason can cause confusion or unintentional offense. Third, verify the service details. I've seen obituaries publish the wrong date or the wrong church because someone assumed the information was correct without double-checking. Newspaper placement is its own headache. Local papers charge by the line or by the inch, and the rates vary wildly. In the Milwaukee area, you're looking at roughly two to four dollars per line for a standard obituary. A 300-word piece with full family listings and service details can easily run you eight hundred to fifteen hundred dollars depending on the paper. Digital-only placements through the funeral home's website are cheaper, often included in the base services, but they reach a much smaller audience. The traditional print obituary still matters for older readers and community awareness, even though everyone says digital is the future.
Get the Full Details
If budget is a concern, consider a hybrid approach. Publish a shorter version in the newspaper and a more complete one on the funeral home's memorial page. Many families do this and report satisfaction with both approaches. The print version gets the essential information out to the broader community, and the online version satisfies people who want to read the fuller story. There are edge cases that trip people up. Blended families require careful wording. Phrases like "survived by his wife, Mary, and his children, John and Susan from his first marriage" are clearer than just listing names without context. Military service should follow the standard format: branch, rank, years of service, and any decorations. If the person served, mentioning it matters to readers, and it's often required for certain military honors at the service. Charitable donations are another area where families get stuck. Pick one or two organizations max. Listing six different charities looks scatterbrained and dilutes the impact. Photos are worth considering. Most funeral home websites allow an image alongside the obituary, and it makes a meaningful difference in how the piece reads. A good photo of the person, ideally something candid rather than a stiff formal portrait, helps readers connect with the life being described. If you go this route, make sure the image is high resolution. Blurry photos uploaded from a phone look amateurish and reflect poorly on the memorial.
The timeline matters more than people expect. Start the process within a few days of death. Newspapers have submission deadlines that can be same-day or next-day, and missing them means your obituary gets pushed to the next available issue or dropped entirely. Funeral homes usually need 24 to 48 hours to prepare and submit. If you're dealing with multiple newspapers or online platforms, coordinate the dates so everything runs close together. Scattered publication dates look careless. I've also learned that tone is harder to nail than people think. The default tone for obituaries is formal and respectful, but that doesn't mean it has to be sterile. A single specific detail — the fact that someone made the best pot roast in county, or that they never missed a Sunday baseball game, or that they adopted fifteen cats over twenty years — gives the piece warmth without breaking convention. Avoid generic phrases like "went peacefully" or "was loved by all." These add nothing and take up space that could be used for something real. One counter-intuitive point: including the cause of death is often more helpful than families realize. If the person died of a well-known illness like cancer, stating it briefly can spare friends and acquaintances from wondering or spreading rumors. You don't need to go into medical detail. "After a lengthy battle with pancreatic cancer" is sufficient and often appreciated by readers who want context.
The final step most people skip is saving a copy. Get a PDF or printed copy of the published obituary for your records. Funeral homes usually keep digital copies, but relying on them to provide one later is a gamble. I've had families call months later asking for a copy they could include in aalbum, and the funeral home couldn't locate the original file. It happens more often than you'd think. Obituaries are supposed to do two things: inform the community about the death and the service, and preserve a readable record of the person's life. Getting both right takes some effort, but it's not complicated. Write clearly, verify everything twice, request a proof before publication, and don't overthink the language. The best obituaries I've seen are the ones that sound like the person — straightforward, honest, and specific about what made them matter.
