In any small community, the deaths of friends are, in many cases, common knowledge.
These are my general guidelines on publishing obituaries:
1.) If a family gives me explicit permission to publish an obituary, emails me the text or tells me I can inform people, I will do so.
2.) If a family publishes an obituary in an online source which references that person as having lived in Huletts, I will most likely publish the link if I am aware of it. Many times however, I do not know of this unless I am notified. My searches and reading sources do not include obituaries, so an obituary could be published online and I would simply not know about it.
3.) If the person occupied a public position, I generally will post that as a news worthy item.
However, if I know of a person’s passing and that person’s online obituary does not mention Huletts Landing, or if the family does not notify me directly, I will not post that information. Why would a family not want this information posted?
Well to begin, many blogs are still not accepted as real “news” sources. Secondly, because we have so many seasonal residents, some people just don’t publicize that they spend time here. Finally, there are any innumerable reasons why people choose to keep this information private.
As the readership of the Huletts Current has grown, I wanted to state this policy openly. I do not “pick and choose” whose obituary to publish. If you want an obituary to be published the best thing to do is contact me directly.