
About Andrew Meacham
Andrew Meacham is the chief Epilogue writer for the Tampa Bay Times, writing obituaries about people from all walks of life. His subjects can be rich or poor, with lengthy or plain resumes. The premise behind the Epilogue is everyone has a story.
Andrew was born in Pittsburgh, Pa., and has lived in St. Petersburg, FL most of his life. He worked eight years in construction, then spent six years as an associate editor at Health Communications, a self-help book publisher. He has an undergraduate degree from Eckerd College and a master’s in journalism from University of South Florida.
He is the author of Selling Serenity (Upton Books, 1999). Andrew has been on its staff since 2005. Two of his stories — on the “sexting”-related suicide of a 13-year-old girl and a dishwasher’s hit-and-run death — each won awards from the Society of Professional Obituary Writers. He also received a best-body-of-work award in 2010. In 2012 Andrew became president of the Society of Professional Obituary Writers, which covers North America.
I perform my OCD rituals to convince myself that the niggling decisions that don’t matter—yet need to be made and without agony—fit some orderly pattern.
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Though I don’t know if there is research to confirm this, I contend that suffering a phobia about making mistakes will increase your chances of making them.
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It’s not always easy, maintaining journalistic distance from subjects undergoing the worst moments of their lives. It’s the obituary writer’s job.
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