Researching Valley Morning Star Obituaries
The Valley Morning Star has been publishing obituaries since at least the 1980s, though some archives go back further. If you are trying to trace family history through their records, you are dealing with a regional newspaper that covers the San Fernando Valley and surrounding areas in Los Angeles County. These aren't digitized as cleanly as you might hope. The first thing you need to know is that the paper is part of the Tribune Publishing group now, but it used to be independent. That matters because the archive handling shifted over the years. I spent about three weeks trying to track down a death notice for my great uncle in 1978. The online database only went back to 1997. I ended up driving to the Los Angeles Public Library on Olympic Boulevard, asking for their microfilm collection, and spent two mornings squinting at newspaper reels. The library has the complete microfilm run. You need a reader-printer card, which costs a dollar a print. Bring cash. They do not take cards at the machine.
Another problem that caught me off guard: Valley Morning Star obituaries before 1990 were sometimes filed under different headline styles or missing from the main obituary page entirely. Some were buried in the classified section, some were brief death notices with no full biography. I found one entry where the deceased had a minor name variation — "Robert" instead of "Roberto" — and the index search missed it entirely. I had to know the exact date of death from church records first, then manually flip through issues on the microfilm. If you are looking for Spanish-language obituaries, which the paper has published for decades given the Latinx population in the Valley, those are sometimes in a separate section or printed on different pages. The microfilm does not distinguish by language, so you will scan through every page. Factor in extra time if that is what you need. The newspaper itself occasionally published supplemental obituary sections around major events or holidays. The 1994 Northridge earthquake issue had a special death toll and memorial section that is not cross-referenced in the index. I learned that the hard way.
Here is what actually works: start with the Social Security Death Index to confirm the death date, then use Ancestry.com's California Newspaper Archive, which includes some Valley Morning Star content. It is not complete, but it covers certain years with full image search. Cross-reference with Find a Grave for headstone dates. When those three sources align, you know you have the right person before you waste hours on microfilm. The biggest bottleneck is that the library microfilm collection does not include every issue. There are gaps from the mid-1990s where the paper merged content with other Tribune publications and the filing system was inconsistent. If your person died between 1994 and 1997, check the Los Angeles Times archives as a secondary source. Many Valley Morning Star obituaries from that period were syndicated into the Times. I also recommend contacting the newspaper's archives department directly. They are not famous for fast responses — I waited six weeks for an email reply — but they can sometimes pull a specific clipping from their physical storage if you provide the full name and approximate date. Include the names of the deceased's surviving family members to help them verify the correct record.
Get the Full Details
There is no single download link or complete digital repository for these obituaries. The closest thing is the California Digital Newspaper Collection, but their Valley Morning Star coverage is spotty. Most of what exists is still on physical microfilm or in the newspaper's own basement files, which are not publicly searchable.
