Repurposing grief
Vol. 3, Issue 19
“I have a stack of obituary cards left over from my mom’s funeral last year. I’ve been using them as bookmarks. My mom instilled the love of reading in me, so I think she’d be tickled.” —Susan Marie
NEWS & NOTES
Connecting to the past
Every day, more mysteries are solved due to advances in DNA technology. Such development has helped authorities solve cold cases and identify missing persons. Recently, these advancements have allowed researchers to positively identify the remains of four more victims from Sir John Franklin’s 19th-century expedition to find the Northwest Passage, a sea route connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans via the Arctic Circle.
It became one of the worst disasters in the history of polar exploration.
In 1845, the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror departed from Britain. A year later, both ships became trapped in the ice, and the crews were forced to spend the winters of 1846–47 and 1847–48 on King William Island. The conditions were brutal, and many of the men suffered from scurvy and lead poisoning. There were even instances of cannibalism.
Three members of the 129-man expedition died during the first year and were buried on site with identifying headstones. Following the deaths of 21 additional men, the remaining 105 crewmembers abandoned the ships in 1848. They tried to trek overland across what is now Nunavut, Canada, to a Hudson’s Bay Company outpost 600 miles to the southwest, but none survived.
Thirty-nine missions were launched to search for the ships and discover what happened to their crews. It would take nearly 170 years before the Erebus and Terror were finally located in the Arctic waters of Canada.
In 2021, anthropologists extracted DNA from remains discovered on King William Island. Then, they compared the DNA with profiles obtained from descendants of expedition personnel. This painstaking work confirmed the identities of two men: John Gregory, the engineer aboard the Erebus, and James Fitzjames, the ship’s captain.
According to a study recently published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, DNA matches from living descendants of the sailors have now assisted researchers in identifying three more Erebus crew members: able seaman William Orren, boy 1st class David Young and subordinate officers’ steward John Bridgens.
Genetic genealogy also helped to identify a fourth set of remains – a man named Harry Peglar – and solved a mystery. To date, Peglar is the only Terror sailor identified using DNA.
A search effort launched in 1859 located an unburied skeleton 81 miles from the other sailors. Yet for 166 years, historians were baffled by the clothing and papers discovered with the remains. Although Peglar was the captain of the foretop on the Terror, the bones were adorned in a steward’s uniform.
Peglar’s personal files, including his seaman’s certificate, were also found in a leather pocketbook with the skeleton. But, it wasn’t clear whether those documents belonged to the bones or had been given to someone else for safekeeping.
This puzzle was solved when the researchers compared DNA from the remains with the DNA of living descendants from six of the eight stewards known to have served aboard the ships – and found no link. It was only after they studied the genetic genealogy of Peglar’s line that they were able to confirm his identity.
As for why he was wearing a steward’s uniform, Peglar may have been demoted during the ill-fated journey. Turns out he had a history of “drunkenness and mutinous conduct.”
FMI: Click here.
Grief author gets life sentence
Kouri Richins, the Utah woman who killed her husband and then wrote a children’s book about coping with grief, will spend the rest of her life behind bars.
In 2022, she poisoned Eric Richins with a fentanyl-laced cocktail. Although Richins denied any wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty, she was convicted of the murder in March 2026. A jury also found her guilty of insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband with a fentanyl-laced sandwich on the Valentine’s Day before his death.
Last week, Judge Richard Mrazik sentenced Richins to life in prison without the possibility of parole because, he said, Richins was “simply too dangerous to ever be free.” The sentence was handed down on what would have been Eric Richins’ 44th birthday.
FMI: Click here.
The truth about grief
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NOTABLE OBITS
* Bestselling romance novelist Judith Barnard, who wrote under the name Judith Michael, died. She was 94. Barnard graduated from Ohio State University with a bachelor’s degree in English and published her first novel, “The Past and Present of Solomon Sorge,” in 1967. It was not a huge success, so Barnard focused on freelance work, writing copy for textbooks, educational films, magazines and newspapers. When she turned 50, Barnard and her second husband, Michael Fain, an aerospace engineer who had also written technical articles, decided to give publishing a second shot. They quit their jobs, lived on savings for a year and penned the novel “Deceptions,” using their first names to create the pseudonym. The book became a bestseller in 1982 and was adapted into a TV mini-series for NBC in 1985. Ten more novels would follow, including “Possessions,” “Sleeping Beauty,” “Pot of Gold” and “Acts of Love.” (Alex Williams, The New York Times)
* Basketball player Jason Collins, the first active, openly gay player in the NBA, died. He was 47. A native Angeleno and identical twin to NBA player Jarron Collins, Jason played basketball at Stanford University. In 2001, the Houston Rockets selected him as the 18th pick in the NBA draft. The 7-foot center was traded that same night to the Brooklyn Nets; he would help the team reach the NBA Finals in 2002 and 2003. During his 13 seasons in the NBA, Collins also played for the Washington Wizards, the Memphis Grizzlies, the Minnesota Timberwolves, the Atlanta Hawks and the Boston Celtics. But his most memorable action in athletics occurred in 2013, when he published an essay in Sports Illustrated announcing, “I’m a 34-year-old NBA center. I’m black. And I’m gay.” His announcement, which received support across the league, helped to open the door for other gay athletes to come out of the closet as well. (Rick Maese, The Washington Post)
* Celebrated mural artist Dan Fontes, 67, died. For more than four decades, Fontes painted murals and other public art across the Bay Area. Among the hundreds of pieces he created were the murals at Musee Mecanique in Fisherman’s Wharf and Free Gold Watch, an arcade in the Haight, as well as the massive wall art in the Pacific Pinball Museum in Alameda. In 1997, he painted “Salud! The Bethany Senior Center” in the Mission, which he claimed was the tallest mural in San Francisco, measuring 100 feet tall by 75 feet wide. Fontes was best known for “Giraphics,” a family of seven giraffes he painted under I-580 in Oakland in 1983. A year later, he completed “Animurals,” which featured a series of zebras. (Amanda Bartlett, SFGate)
* Longtime movie critic and celebrity interviewer Rex Reed died at 87. The Texan studied journalism at Louisiana State University before moving to New York City to work as a freelance writer. The first piece he sold to The New York Times was an interview with Buster Keaton, the “Great Stone Face” of the silent screen; it would prove to be the comedic actor-filmmaker’s final interview. Over the next six decades, Reed would publish reviews and celebrity Q&As in Esquire, GQ, the New York Daily News, New York Magazine, the New York Observer, Vogue and Women’s Wear Daily. He became known as the “bad boy of entertainment journalism” because so many of his critiques were sharp and biting -- even cruel. Reed also published eight books, including four bestselling collections of profiles and the novel, “Personal Effects.” (Christie D’Zurilla, Los Angeles Times and Duane Byrge, The Hollywood Reporter)
* Cynthia Shange, the first Black South African to enter the Miss World contest, died at 76. In 1972, at the height of apartheid, the 23-year-old not only competed in the Miss World beauty pageant but also placed in the top five. However, she technically represented “Africa South,” a country that did not exist; the official Miss World contestant representing South Africa that year was Stephanie Reinecke, who was white and blonde. Returning home from London, where the pageant was held, was difficult for Shange. In the U.K., she was “treated like everybody else,” she said, but in segregated South Africa, Shange would have to use separate bathrooms and request food at restaurants through the back door. After the pageant, Shange worked as a model and an actress, and appeared in “u’Deliwe,” one of South Africa’s first feature films with an all-Black cast. She also worked on the popular TV series “Shaka Zulu” and the soap opera “Muvhango.” (Adam Nossiter, The New York Times)
FAMOUS DEATHS IN HISTORY
On May 19, former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (64), Canadian-American TV newscaster Morley Safer (84) and British novelist Martin Amis (73)
On May 20, comedian/actress Gilda Radner (42), paleontologist/biologist/historian Stephen Jay Gould (60) and journalist/author/editor Arthur Gelb (90)
On May 21, English aviation pioneer/aerospace engineer Geoffrey de Havilland (82), English romance novelist Barbara Cartland (98) and English actor/theatre director John Gielgud (96)
On May 22, former first lady Martha Washington (70), Native American poet Jane Johnston Schoolcraft (42) and French author Victor Hugo (83)
On May 23, British actor Roger Moore (89), children’s author/illustrator Eric Carle (91) and director/documentary producer Morgan Spurlock (53)
On May 24, jazz pianist/composer/orchestra leader Duke Ellington (75), Québécois painter Arthur Villeneuve (80) and singer/songwriter/actress Tina Turner (83)
On May 25, Olympic archer Eliza Pollock (78), publisher Roger Williams Straus Jr. (87) and actor Charles Nelson Reilly (76)
RECOMMENDED SUBSTACK
FAMOUS LAST WORDS
“If you will send for a doctor, I will see him now.” --Emily Brontë to her sister, Charlotte
MOMENT OF GRATITUDE
Thanks to Sandy Millar, Unsplash, Susan Marie, National Geographic, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Royal Museums Greenwich, YouTube, JSTOR, CNN, the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, Cambridge University Press, CBS News, The Associated Press, Kelley Lynn, TEDx Talks, The Death Deck, The Written Word, The New York Times, PBS NewsHour, The Washington Post, Dan Fontes, SFGate, the Los Angeles Times, The Hollywood Reporter, eNCA, A Bit of Good News, On This Day, Playback.FM, Britannica: This Day in History, Time and Date, Wikipedia, Writer, Interrupted, Canva and Deposit Photos for art and story suggestions. Note: Generative AI was not used during the ideation, creation or publication of this newsletter.
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