Sharing the Obituary Report (Printing, Emailing, Copying)
Reunion creates an Obituary report very similar to what you would read in a typical newspaper or online obituary — a report of the death of a person, containing a summary account of a person's life. Obituaries typically include the day of the week of the death event, the names and relationships of parents, grandparents, spouse, children, spouses of children, grandchildren, etc.
To create an Obituary report...
Note: The Obituary report can only be created for a person who has a death date.
When selecting
, the report for the husband in the current family view will appear by default. To see an obituary for the wife of the current family, click the husband/wife buttons at the top of the report; or, single-click a name in any sidebar to choose anybody in your family file.The references to other people in the Obituary report are worded as if the report was written on the death date of the source person. Thus, the use of phrases like "is survived by" should be interpreted as if they were written on the death date of the source person — not today's date. Similarly, your records may show that a person has 10 grandchildren, but the Obituary report only mentions four of those grandchildren because the other six were not yet born when the source person died.
The Obituary report includes the preferred picture for an individual.
The purpose of Reunion's obituary report is to provide a document that you can compare with a "real" obituary, i.e., an original document or copy that you might find. Comparing Reunion's Obituary report with the original may help you to discover information heretofore not included in your records. In cases where you are trying to establish the identity of somebody whose "real" obituary you do have, it may help to compare that document to the obit generated by Reunion.
Also, you may find Reunion's Obituary report handy for creating new obituaries for publications or for creating hypothetical obituaries for relatives that may have died a very long time ago.
Limitations of the Obituary Report
It's important to note that people without birth dates and couples without marriage dates will be excluded from the Obituary report since Reunion doesn't have enough information to decide how these people would fit into the report.
The "of" places for people in the obituary report are taken from the most recent event for a person — provided the event is before the death date of the obituary's source person. Thus, in some cases, the "of" locations report, for the death, the death place or, for the living, the birth place. Needless to say, in these instances the "of" locations would be "wrong" for people who no longer live where they were born.
For example, when a Graduation event is the last recorded event prior to the Death event, you may see something like this in the Obituary report: "Leroy is survived by three children, Mary Jane SIMMONS and her husband John Edgar SIMMONS of McLearnville High School, McLearnville, VA…"
Sharing the Obituary Report - Printing, Emailing, Copying
To share the Obituary report (print, edit, copy, attach to an email, etc.), click the button in the bottom bar, under the Obituary report. This opens the Share window with the following options...