Richard G. Pearson, a journalist who spent two decades writing obituaries for the Washington Post, died on Nov. 11 from pancreatic cancer. He was 54.
Although he was born in Illinois, Pearson lived in Washington D.C. for most of his life. An interest in politics drove him to take an internship on Capitol Hill and to earn a political science degree from American University.
In 1971, Pearson joined the Washington Post. He worked as a copy aide in the photo department and on the metro desk before landing what he called the perfect job -– researching, writing and editing thousands of obituaries. Some of the lives he chronicled? Cary Grant, Roy Rogers, Andy Warhol and Ted Williams.
"… Everyone dies in the first graf of my stories, but I console myself with the thoughts that there are relatively few complaints from people I write about," Pearson once joked.
His last obit, published in August, focused on Idi Amin. Pearson described him as "the unquestionably evil and perversely fascinating dictator of the east central African nation of Uganda."