by Ted Tobias

Background to the compilation of the book

In 1968 Edward Kennedy read back the words of his dead brother Robert to a somber group of mourners: “I dream of things that never were and say why not.” The words of the eulogist capture a moment when the living begin to define the memory of one who has died. When a famous person passes millions watch on television to see who attends the funeral and what was said about the deceased. A portion of the text is often printed in newspapers the next day, but it is rarely easily accessible to readers and researchers later when the death is history and not a current event. The insights (and blind spots) of a eulogy are worth remembering for the honor they give to important figures and for the contribution they can make to our understanding of history. Excerpts are often used and/or repeated by speakers, clergy and all of us in a variety of contexts.

In Tribute: Eulogies of Famous People presents for the first time a collection of 42 eulogies in their complete text. In many cases the eulogies were give by men and women with famous reputations of their own. In Tribute offers a unique and illuminating opportunity to glimpse people in the context of their times. Three years in the compiling due mainly to securing the rights to use the words of the eulogizers from them or their heirs, Ted Tobias has collected the eulogies of political leaders who played compelling roles in the events of the nation and the world, including John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Winston Churchill; important social and political reformers among them Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Norman Vincent Peale; some of America’s most gifted and beloved performers and artists, among them Louis Armstrong, Robert Frost, Orson Welles, Walt Disney, George Burns, Natalie Wood, and Stan Laurel; and athletes such as Arthur Ashe, Mickey Mantle, and Carl Hubbell. The eulogies appear alphabetically by the last name of the person being eulogized, and are preceded by brief biographical background sketches of both the deceased and the eulogizer.

About the Author

Born in New York City in 1932, Ted Tobias spent the first twenty-eight years of his life in the South Bronx and the past forty years on the West Coast, primarily in Beverly Hills, California. He graduated from the City College of New York, uptown, and later spent two years in graduate social work study at Hunter College. To earn money for school, he sandwiched in a five-year stint as an NBC page. On the West Coast, Tobias has been a successful entrepreneur, whose interests ranged from computer software development to television, stage, and motion picture production. He also operated a well-known seven-store retail chain dealing in art supplies and fine pens for over thirty years. A widower since 1999, Tobias resides in Beverly Hills. He is currently penning a memoir of his happy marriage of forty years and the three months of his wife’s terminal illness. In Tribute II will be published in mid-2002.