Old Man Reads Obituaries First Every Morning to Make Sure He Isn't In Them

DOTHAN, AL — Retired pharmacist Harold Benson, 90, begins every morning by opening the local newspaper directly to the obituaries, scanning carefully for his own name before moving on to the rest of the paper, a practice he describes as "basic due diligence."

"First thing I do, before coffee, is check the obituaries," Benson said, unfolding the newspaper at his kitchen table. "I go down the list, name by name, very carefully. If I'm not in there, I figure I'm probably alive. Then I can go about my day."

Benson said the habit began about a decade ago, when he noticed that most of his friends were appearing in the obituaries with increasing regularity.

"At a certain point, you stop reading the sports page and start reading the obituaries," he said. "That's where all your friends are. It's like the society page for old people. You see who passed, who was survived by who, whose grandkids wrote a nice tribute. It's how we keep up."

Each morning, after confirming his absence, Benson calls his friend Leon, 92, to report the news.

"I'll say, 'Leon, I'm not in it,'" Benson said. "And Leon will say, 'Me neither.' Then we'll talk about who is in it. Sometimes we knew them. Sometimes we didn't. Sometimes we owed them money."

Benson's wife, Carol, said she has learned not to interrupt the ritual.

"He gets very focused," she said. "He reads every name. One morning, there was a Harold Benson in there, a different one from Montgomery. Harold just sat there for a minute, staring at it. Then he looked up at me and said, 'Carol, am I dead?' I said, 'No, honey, you're eating a biscuit.' He said, 'Okay, good,' and kept eating."

Benson said he has occasionally offered critiques of other people's obituaries.

"Some of them are very well written," he said. "Some of them are a little long. One lady's obituary mentioned her prize-winning roses, her bridge club, and her famous banana pudding. I thought, 'Now that's a life.' Mine better be at least that good. I've been working on the pudding."

At press time, Benson had finished reviewing the obituaries, declared himself "still in business," and moved on to the crossword puzzle.