Member-only story
It’s Never Too Early to Pick Out Your Obituary Photo
Just make sure you still have that envelope from 24-Hour Photo handy.
A while ago, my friend Jeanne sent me an obituary announcement from Twitter for an astronaut who had passed away. The headline read “Apollo Astronaut James McDivitt Dies at Age 93.” Looking at it was like one of those “what’s wrong with this picture” games. The picture that ran with the obituary is below for your viewing pleasure.
I must admit, I stared at it for a good few minutes trying to figure out two things: 1) how a typo of this magnitude got published in which a 39-year-old astronaut was noted as 93 and 2) how I got so out of touch with the goings on of NASA.
For the record, I gave the latter one far less thought and I feel like I need to rectify that and start thinking more deeply about space.
The first one, though, I fully investigated only to find that it was not a typo. He was not 39, he really was 93 when he died.
They ran a decades-old picture as an obituary photo. Why? Because as I have noted in my podcast…
