Iowa Newspaper Obituaries
where can i find information on my deceased uncle from 1973?
My uncle passed away at the age of 20 back in 1973. He died in Dubuque, Iowa and I have been searching their newspaper (Telegraph Herald) online for an obituary or a write up regarding his death, since it was not due to illness and my parents have said they had a story on him the day after he passed away. I haven’t had any luck, but I’m wondering if there is any other source I can go through online, or if I should contact someone and if so, who? I live in California so there is no way I can travel to the library in Dubuque to find archives. Thank you!
You could
Post a request on the Ancestry.com query board for the county,
OR
the Genforum query board for the county (NOT BOTH)
OR
look up a Random Acts of genealogical Kindness “Volunteer” (Some ask for gas money) in the county
OR
send a SASE and a small check ($5) to the library.
Pick one, and one only. Nothing annoys a kind-hearted person who looks things up via one route more than being told “Sorry – I got it through another route”. There are people who will do lookups for free, out of the goodness of their hearts. Some counties have none, some have half a dozen. They won’t be related to you. They will be human. In the worst case, if three or four people post on both query boards, and the KHV for one board wastes his time two or three times in a row, the number of KHVs in that county will go down by one.
In all four cases you need the exact name and exact death date for your uncle.
In all four cases someone is going to be wading through a week’s worth of old newspapers on microfilm.
Iowa Newspaper Obituaries
Unless you are steeped in the history and tradition of southern football you might get the impression from television, radio or the newspapers that football season is beginning. Those of us who have followed southern football since before the NFL deemed it fitting to locate one of their teams farther south than the nation’s capitol, know better.
In order for football season to begin it would have to end, and of course, it doesn’t. Let me provide a few tidbits of information in case you were raised in a place where playing hockey is actually considered an alternative to football or where the end of the professional baseball season is more important than Thursday night Junior High School football.
Football in the north and football in the south are different things entirely. In the north you get tickets at the stadium ten minutes before kickoff. In the south you put your name on a waiting list ten months before the game, pony up a second mortgage on the trailer to the booster club, and read the obituaries looking for an opening. There have been divorces, and I’m told murders, over who actually owns the family’s season tickets.
If a good old boy Alabama graduate marries a belle from Auburn or a lawyer’s son graduates from Ole Miss and marries a farmer’s daughter from Mississippi State we call those mixed marriages. No weapons are allowed at family get togethers.
Parking at football games also illustrates the differences. Up north the university opens campus for parking a couple of hours before game time. In the south RVs sporting school flags arrive on Wednesday and begin setting up the smokers.
Tailgating just means something else in the south. In the north tailgating food consists of sausage on the grill or avocado sandwiches and maybe a beer with lime all served on a portable picnic table. In the south a 30-foot custom pig-shaped smoker fires up at dawn. The cooking contest is the only activity that even begins to rival the football game. Winners will want their trophy buried with them and something like, “Best Hog Cooker” on their tombstones.
At northern universities still engaging in such archaic activities, the homecoming queen plays Field Hockey and is majoring in Women’s Studies while in the south your homecoming queen might well be a future Miss America. In the north both stadium and campus empty soon after the band finishes its halftime medley of classic show tunes. In the south when the game is over another rack of ribs goes on the smoker. Somebody makes a cold beverage run, every play of the just concluded contest is discussed, and planning begins for next week’s game.
Of course there is also a different way of dealing with classes after the ESPN Thursday night game. In the north students and professors may not attend the game due to classes on Friday. In the south professors cancel classes because even if a couple of students actually come to class they’ll be hung over.
Football season lasts the entire year, moving from games to recruiting to spring practice to NCAA investigations to preseason practice and back to games. In the south football season will never be over and that’s all right with me.
Jack Kean
http://www.keanwriter.com
If you thought this was fun try Jack’s Mississippi State page and from there link to fun and great information on RV life, English Bulldogs, article marketing and much more. Of skip the Mississippi State page and click the link above.
