Ms Hook showed me this obituary in the Reno yesterday. It has since been pulled from the paper’s online edition.
As it turns out we know some of the people involved. One of the sons is married to a woman who worked with Ms Hook for several years. I’d heard her say some things about her MIL but had no idea it was this bad.
Sort of puts most of your everyday run of the mill family spats into perspective doesn’t it.
That shows the obituary text reading that she “Died alone on Sept. 30th, 2013”. Are the children planning something? Posted the obituary a little too soon?
Um, yeah, the obit head has 9/30/2013 as well. There’s something wrong here…
It was August 30; I don’t know how they got the wrong month on there.
Roddy
eta: this was a self-service obituary, so apparently it was the children’s mistake. That’s what happens when you have self-service direct to print without anyone proofing it first. Oh, and also you get a scathing obituary that no reputable newspaper would have printed if it didn’t slip through this way.
If you scout around the web you see other sites with August 30th. I think it was just a typo on the paper’s part.
It was, and that was the REAL reason why the original was pulled.
It’s stories like this that make me so grateful I have two wonderful parents who loved me, loved each other, raised me right and are still together, for over 61 years.
I don’t know what I did to deserve them , I’m just glad I’ll be able to help take care of them when they need it.
No message board I’ve seen has even skimmed the topic of the kids’ father(s) until I brought it up. 
Does anyone know what he/they was/were like?
All I ever heard about was the mother. FAIK they spent most of their time in foster homes.
I thought it was a very “real” obituary and I was glad to see it (though sorry for the kids.) No sugar-coating there, that’s for sure.
When my mother died we put the usual in her obit because it seemed like the thing to do. But at her funeral the minister couldn’t find anything good to say about her and used the time to talk about how to act, and how to treat other people.
It’s not a good sign when a pastor can’t find anything good to say about someone. :eek:
Her kids did what they needed to do to heal. In the process, they are bringing to light once again, that it is really hard to heal from this type of abuse. Good for them.
Two years ago, I attended a funeral of a friend who passed away suddenly at 60. He was a recovering alcoholic and had gotten his life back on track and was really learning how to express himself and focus on what was important to him. He was living with/caretaking his mother at the time. Sadly, the pastor had nothing good to say about Ed as his only source of information was Ed’s evil, nasty piece of work mother. Though he was caretaking her, she could not forgive him his alcoholism and refused to see how hard he was working and the progress he was making in putting his life back together.
I am glad the adult children in this story have the opportunity to breathe for themselves now. And good for them for telling it like it was.
It was beautiful to read this Baker. I am sure they are equally proud of you. Thanks for sharing and congratulations.
The paper that ran the obituary had a reporter interview the two children (now in their 50s) who composed it. “Highlights” of this woman’s life include running escort businesses and having at least one of the kids sleep on the floor there, and physically and mentally abusing the kids badly enough that at one point, six were taken away to an orphanage and stayed there “until they either turned 18, joined the military, got married or were ordered to go back and live with their mother.” The two who wrote the article were furious with the state for going that far but not bothering to terminate her parental rights, and testified in hearings in Nevada back in the '80s on the subject.
According to the on line article those children were a large reason why the law in Nevada was amended to give the children more say so over whether or not they had to live with their biological parents.