Looking at the Obituaries

  I try and catch up on the obituaries from The Kansas City Star.  I lived in the Kansas City area from 1941 until 2000.  I wish the newspaper had all the obituaries online for searching.  They like, I am sure, other papers use a service (www.legacy.com) and if a death is not current you get kicked over to the service where you have to pay to get the information.
  One day my name will be in the obituaries.  Some other person will be looking and see my name and being saying “oh I remember him.” 
  I can remember my father reading the newspaper at home and telling my mother that someone passed away and they would remember the person.  At the time I was thinking they knew a lot of dead people.  I understand now.  You reach a certain age and people you knew start ending up in the obituaries.

  The newspapers may soon be in the obituaries!  There may soon be no more printed newspapers.  Everything will be online.  I hope all the old obituaries will be online someplace were you do not have to pay to look up one.
  Maybe the AARP could work out some deal.  You have an AARP membership and you get access to all obituaries.

  If you read obituaries you sort of get a feeling for our nation and of the history of our nation.  You see a lot of great stories about a lot of great normal people.
  I wonder what you will think when you read obituaries 50 years from now.
 
  I see that Maurice Francis Perll M.D. passed away on January 6th of 2012.  He was on the staff of all the hospitals that I worked at from St. Joseph Hospital (old location) on. 
  I remember the name but I can not put a story to him.  He was an Orthopaedic doctor.  But his partner Donald Kirk Piper M.D. I had a lot contact with and talked to many times.  I did not know he had passed away until I read this Perll obt.    
  Doctor Piper was very nice.  He had a fancy car when I worked at the old St. Joseph Hospital (72 to 75).  I forget the name but it was one you noticed and could not miss. He would pull into the doctor’s parking lot and have his radio going loud.  He often would sit in his car and listen to the radio.  Often the PBX operator would call out to the parking lot guard shack and ask if Doctor Piper was here yet.  Then I would go over to his car and tell him that the operator was asking about him and he had call or something.  He was always very nice and would thank me and go on into the hospital.
  The morning that I came into work and my friend John’s blood was on the ground in the parking lot he is one of the doctors that when he pulled in I went over and told him and showed him John’s blood and I told him that I had just talked to the hospital administrator and he laughed and said he was not going to do anything about it.  (I had told the administrator a few months before that the hospital needed to get us bullet proof vests and put up a gate between the church parking lot and the doctor’s parking lot.  I told him then if they did not do that we would have another officer shot.  It did happen again.)  When I told Doctor Piper he said something to the effect of “Jim I will take care of it.”  He went right into the hospital and went right to the office of the administrator.  He had to line up because I sent every doctor on the medical staff to the administrator’s office! The assist administrator came out a few minutes later and told me the hospital WAS going to get us vests and would put up a gate.  I stayed until they did that and then gave two weeks notice and went to work at TLH because I knew my name was on a list with a big red circle around it.