In 1998, a little office opened in Chicago with one goal: to bring print obituaries online. Twenty-five years, several tech bubbles and one pandemic later, Legacy.com has grown from 12 employees and a ping-pong table into a coast-to-coast team that provides digital end-of-life services to millions worldwide. To commemorate this milestone, we asked Legacy’s staff to reflect on how obituaries and memorialization have changed over the last 25 years. Here’s what they had to say.
1.) Technology has made obituaries more personal
Once upon a time, most obituaries were a routine affair: a templated list of survivors and a few quick biographical facts. Today, they’re much more likely to offer unique, memorable stories — living testaments with the power to touch strangers thousands of miles away. “Now more than ever, people are motivated to really capture the essence of their loved ones in obituaries,” says Danielle Zimmerman, director of marketing at Legacy. “Creative, personal notices are no longer few and far between.”
Historians and Legacy team members point to Legacy’s work with The New York Times after 9/11 as an inflection point for obituaries:
Many longtime Legacy employees note the rise of social media as another reason for this move toward personalization. “People want their loved ones remembered,” says John Heald, a licensed funeral director who has led Legacy’s funeral home initiatives for the last ten years. “For today’s generation, this means crafting an obituary creative enough to get shared online.”
This trend toward more intimate and permanently accessible obituaries over the past two decades has had a remarkable effect: It has far more broadly showcased the beautiful lives of people who may never have made headlines, but who were deeply loved for who they were.
“I’ve read a lot of obituaries over my time at Legacy,” says Paul Barnum, one of the web developers who has maintained Legacy’s vast network of online obituary pages for the past seven years. “So many of the lives I’ve seen were so FULL, and these people weren’t celebrities. They were just human beings going about their days. You don't have to be in the top 1 percent of anything to make a difference in peoples' lives.”
The sorts of personal details that families are now including in obituaries can have surprising resonance for the people reading. “A few years ago, I worked on an obituary where the first line of text was that he'd passed doing what he loved: tending to his watermelon fields,” reflected support team member Greg Vyska. “That’s not something you see every day.”
This kind of storytelling isn’t only memorable — it has also helped bring much-needed attention to some difficult social issues. “I’ve seen so much growth in honest obituaries over the last decade,” says Danielle Zimmerman. “From acknowledging people’s struggles with mental health and addiction to describing the horrors they witnessed in concentration camps: today, obituaries aren’t afraid to ‘go there.’”
These unapologetic obituaries can have a powerful impact on the living. “I can’t tell you how often I’ve read comments from strangers on a guest book, just random people who are touched by someone else’s life struggle,” says content screener Judy Sloan. “Sharing these stories of people who have thrived in the face of adversity or after experiencing something horrific, like the Auschwitz death camps, helps people to realize that they, too, can overcome their own suffering, and go on to live full and meaningful lives.”
2.) Guest books help keep our memories alive forever
Even beyond the impact of the written obituary is the profound power of the online guest book that accompanies it. As Stopher Bartol, Legacy’s founder, puts it: “Before Legacy, no one had access to guest books after the funeral. It was a print book that sat on a shelf for years. But an online guest book can be bookmarked and accessed forever, wherever, and whenever someone wants to.”
This convenience created a whole new type of written memorial to the deceased, ones that serve as a permanent touchpoint to a lost loved one. Stories of these memorable guest books abound from Legacy’s content review team:
This ‘keep-in-touch' relationship with their lost loved one, which can go on for decades, is often cited by readers as a key service they depend on each day.
“We had a customer who would call in every day to correct the guest book entry he wrote to his wife the night before,” says Christine Layshock, who’s served on the support team for eighteen years. “He couldn’t rest until it was perfect. He sent our team gifts nearly every holiday as a thank you, right until he died.”
3.) Online obituaries give us an intimate view of history
Several longtime Legacy employees shared memories of how online obituaries and guest books changed the way society grieves and understands national tragedies.
4.) "The most memorable guest book entries are ones that no one ever sees” (Connie Walsh, vice president of advertising)
If there’s one thing everyone at Legacy understands, it’s that the people who interact with obituaries and guest books are vulnerable and need support and respect.
“When you have lost someone, you are doing your best to hold up your littler corner of the world,” says support agent Justice Cain. “Your priorities instantly shift, your strength is zapped, and your ability to think clearly and in detail is, at best, sketchy. Tasks you usually find easy are suddenly impossible to do.”
“They just need to talk and feel like their situation matters to someone for a minute,” adds team member Lana Hawes. “It might be the only chance they get."
Many across the company reflected on how the behind-the-scenes work of content review is just as important today as when the company launched:
5.) "They were here. They mattered.”
Everyone at Legacy is still in awe of the power of online memorialization to impact others. “Posting good guest book entries is like spreading seeds of comfort in a world that desperately needs more kindness,” offers Lynmarie D’Amore, Legacy’s director of operations. “You never know who is going to get a lift exactly when they need it.”
Danielle Zimmerman, who founded and manages Legacy’s online grief groups, shared this story:
Sometimes, those rich moments of unexpected impact from an online obituary happen right in Legacy’s office. As Lynmarie reflects:
6.) It’s where life stories live on
More lives remembered. More people connected. The positive impacts from the obituary’s evolution are clear. And as the digital-first generation becomes the increasingly dominant force on the internet, the need to keep innovating drives Legacy’s development team.
“When I founded Legacy, I wanted the company to be the place where life stories live on,” says Stopher Bartol. “We plan to spend the next 25 years continuing to deliver on that promise.”
From community memorial pages that serve as local remembrance hubs, to self-service obituary intakes services with AI-assisted writing tools, to ...
But wherever the future holds, the company remains committed to preserving the role of the obituary as the first and best place to remember a loved one.
“We’re helping protect the 200+ year old tradition of publishing one's life story for the community and future generations to discover,” says Alan Press, Legacy’s CEO. “It’s a sacred responsibility we’re proud to shoulder.”
Contact us at sales@legacy.com to discover how we can help keep your newspaper at the heart of your community.
