Searching Obituaries At Keehr: What Actually Works
Keehr Funeral Home handles deaths across portions of the Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania. Their site isn't the most intuitive, but it's serviceable once you know where to click. The main search pulls up obituaries by name or date range. It defaults to a reverse-chronological sort, which means recent deaths appear first. That's useful if you're looking for someone who died this week, but terrible if you're hunting for a death that happened three years ago. I spent about twenty minutes trying to find an obituary for my great-uncle who passed in late 2022. The search box kept returning zero results even though I knew he was listed. Turns out the site indexes obituaries by their memorial page creation date, not the date of death. Once I switched to browsing by month instead of searching by name, I found it in about thirty seconds. Not ideal, but I noted it down.
Unlocking The Power Of Keehr Funeral Home Obituaries A Comprehensive Guide To Searching Understanding And Paying Tribute
The search interface
Go to their website and look for the obituary section. There's a search bar at the top and a browse-by-date link below it. The search bar accepts full names and partial matches. I recommend always using the browse feature as a backup. Here's the practical workflow I use: Step one: Enter the person's full name. Leave the date range blank unless you know approximately when they died. Broad searches return too many results on that system. Step two: If the name search fails, switch to the browse view and scroll through months. Obituaries typically go live within forty-eight hours of the funeral service, sometimes sooner.
Step three: Once you find the right entry, read the full text. Keehr obituaries usually include the deceased's full name, age, surviving family members, service details, and a brief life summary. The formatting is consistent across entries.
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What the obituaries actually tell you
These aren't just name-and-date listings. The detailed versions contain genealogical gold. I've pulled maiden names, surviving siblings' full names, and sometimes even the names of grandchildren from these pages. The family information sections are usually accurate because they're provided directly by the next of kin. Service information is printed in full. You get the date, time, location, and officiating clergy. If there's a visiting hour before the main service, that's listed too. The donation preference is always at the bottom. It typically says something like "in lieu of flowers, donations may be made to..." followed by an organization name and mailing address. One thing people miss: the online guestbook. Each obituary has a comment section where family and friends post memories. These often contain details that aren't in the main text. I found a cousin's military service history buried in a guestbook comment that never appeared in the official obituary itself.
Paying tribute through the site
There are three practical ways to acknowledge someone at Keehr. The first is leaving a message in the online guestbook. Keep it brief and personal. Long essays tend to get skipped. Two or three sentences about a specific memory works better than a paragraph of generic sentiment. The second is sending flowers or a donation through the links provided. The flower service is usually handled by a local florist partnered with the funeral home. If the obituary lists a charity, use the mailing address they provide rather than clicking through to a third-party fundraising page. The charity will process it correctly that way. The third option is attending the service. The obituary lists the exact time and place. These are usually held at the funeral home chapel or a nearby church. Most services run between forty-five minutes and an hour. You don't need to RSVP unless the family specifically requests it.
Common problems and what to do about them
The site occasionally drops obituaries from search results if the URL changes during a system update. I've seen this happen twice in the past year. If a link you bookmarked returns a 404, search by the person's name with a broad date range. The obituary usually reappears within twenty-four hours. Sometimes the search engine doesn't handle middle names or initials well. If you're looking for "Robert James Smith" and it doesn't come up, try just "Robert Smith." The browse feature doesn't have this problem at all. There's no downloadable database or API for the obituaries. If you need to compile a list for research purposes, you'll have to manually copy each entry. I wrote a simple script once to scrape the public pages, but that's against their terms of service and I don't recommend it. Manual copying takes about three minutes per obituary if you just need the key facts.
What this system doesn't do well
The search functionality is basic. There's no filtering by location, occupation, or military service. You can't sort by any field other than the default date order. If you're doing genealogical research and need to find all obituaries for a particular surname across a five-year span, this isn't the right tool. You'd be better off using a paid genealogy database or the local historical society's records. The site also doesn't archive older obituaries indefinitely. After about two years, entries tend to get removed or moved to a separate archive that isn't linked from the main page. If you need a death record from several years ago, check with the funeral home directly. They keep physical records even when the website doesn't. Mobile responsiveness is mediocre. The text loads fine on a phone, but the search interface is cramped and hard to navigate. Use a desktop if possible.
The practical takeaway
Use the browse feature when the search fails. Always check the guestbook comments for additional details. Save obituaries you find to your own records since the site doesn't guarantee long-term preservation. If you need something beyond what's publicly available, call the funeral home. Their staff is generally helpful and can pull older records that aren't posted online. The whole process takes about ten minutes from start to finish if you know what you're looking for. It's slower if you're unfamiliar with the system or if the person you're searching for has a common name. My rule of thumb is to give yourself thirty minutes max. If you still can't find what you need after that, switch tactics or contact the funeral home directly.
