Meet Fred Rasmussen, inveterate obit writer

His desk is last call
in the Baltimore Sun newsroom

By Amanda Krew
Baltimore Watchdog Staff Writer 

Fred Rasmussen, 72, or, in his words, “somewhere between 40 and death,” sat at the communal table at the back of Grand Cru in Belvedere Square Market. He waited for his friends to arrive for a Sunday afternoon drink.

“Caroline! A Gold Rush! Up,” he called to the bartender, ordering an off-the-menu classic cocktail.

He set his well-worn Brooks Brothers golf cap on the table next to a clipping of his latest piece from The Baltimore Sun.

The word “inveterate” is underlined near the bottom of the page.

As one of The Sun’s obituary reporters, Rasmussen earned the sobriquet of “Digger” or “Dr. Death.” He jokingly says no one goes until he says so.

“I have the last word,” Rasmussen said with a hearty laugh that bristled his white mustache.

Rasmussen is a veteran reporter of 47 years at The Sun, writing obituaries since 1992. His articles were edited by David Ettlin from 1990 until 2007. Ettlin is retired, but he’s not sure if that’s Fred’s fate.

“He might not be there to turn off the lights when the place goes out of business,” Ettlin said. “But I think they’ll have to carry him out to get rid of him.”

Ettlin praised Rasmussen for his ability to find something special about each person.

“He can talk to people and get the stories out of them,” Ettlin said. “It’s called tenacity.”

He began in the newspaper’s library in 1973 where he oversaw 7 million photographs. In 1990, he became an editorial assistant covering Baltimore County and later Carroll County in the county editions.

“I found all kinds of interesting people to write about for feature stories,” Rasmussen said. “One of my favorites was a guy from Westminster who was a veterinarian for the Iditarod.”

In 1992, editor John Carroll summoned Rasmussen back to Baltimore to write obituaries.

Carroll recognized that the obituary page, which was then three columns in the print edition, was due for an update. This change allowed Rasmussen to cover immigrants in Little Italy, African Americans in West Baltimore, and Jewish people in Pikesville for the paper.

 “John said he was sick and tired of the obit page being just about lawyers, doctors, and Guilford socialites, that Baltimore was an immigrant city with a great culture,” Rasmussen said. “It’s an African American city. We were not covering these people. We needed to get more blue-collar people on the obit page.”

In the 90s, the obits were written by Rasmussen and DeWitt Bliss, a man Rasmussen nicknamed “DeWittless” for his lack of empathy in his obituary reporting. This is a shortcoming the two reporters do not share.

“Fred is good at talking,” Ettlin said. “When he is talking to folks who are fairly ordinary, who aren’t accustomed to dealing with reporters, I think his empathy gets through to them and they open up and tell him things.”

Rasmussen’s contributes what he calls the “mort du jour” and the “mini mort,” a feature story and a brief featured on the obituary page of The Sun’s print edition.

The requests for obituaries come in from funeral homes, families, and sometimes within The Sun newsroom by email. Rasmussen checks the requests every morning upon his arrival to the newsroom at 7 a.m.

He prefers to publish pieces before the deceased’s service. Rasmussen remarks that this is difficult for Jews and Muslims because they get buried right away. He leaves the office at 2 p.m. “so we gotta get rolling fast,” Rasmussen said.

“There are no boring lives, only boring obits,” Rasmussen said. “You gotta find out what the hook is. Regrettably, a lot of people only define their lives by what they did for a living and that may not be it. Maybe you were a war hero or a neighborhood activist or you ran a literacy program or you visited the elderly.”

Rasmussen remembered writing an obituary for a dentist named Hugh Hicks.

 “The hell with being a dentist,” Rasmussen said. “He had the most amazing collection of light bulbs in the country that was later acquired by The Smithsonian.”

Rasmussen has been in communication with Dennis Xenakis, managing director of Mitchell-Wiedefeld Funeral Home in North Baltimore, since 1990.

“He has the ability to take the information of the ordinary person and make them extraordinary,” Xenakis said. “He believes in honoring all lives, not just those of prominence and social status.”

Certain stories are difficult like when the cause of death is suicide. In obituaries, the word “suicide” is replaced with the more tasteful “took their own life.” The mechanics are never discussed. Certain causes of death are sensitive in certain cultures. In the African American community, heart related illnesses and cancers may be seen as embarrassing, Fred explained.

“You tell people ‘listen, we’re not making judgement here,’ ” said Rasmussen, “It’s not the end, it’s the life, we just need the cause of death.”

Rasmussen said that Baltimore has one main quirk in obituary practices pertaining to loyalty to one’s high school.

“You’re forever marked by your high school,” Rasmussen said. “Nobody gives a rat’s ass that you went to Princeton or Harvard.”

But, one of the quirks in Rasmussen’s writing has nothing to do with Baltimore, but a favorite word. Since 1994, Rasmussen has published “inveterate” in The Sun 201 times, much to the chagrin of Ettlin.  

“As far as I’m concerned, he is never allowed to use it,” Ettlin said. “But there aren’t enough editors to stop it. As long as he spells it right it might get in the paper.”

Rasmussen picked the obituary clipping up off the table and ordered a second drink, the same way he ordered the first.

“Caroline! A Gold Rush! Up!”

The obituary was for a man named Melvin S. Kabik who passed on Feb. 12.

Rasmussen pointed at the underlined word at the fourth to last paragraph and chuckled to himself.

“I put it right in there!”

Fred’s Gold Rush
2oz Bourbon
.75oz honey syrup
.75oz lemon juice
2 dashes angostura bitters
shaken with ice, served up with a lemon wedge