Why did best-selling author Carol Saline email The Inquirer’s obit writer?
“Dear Gary,” she wrote. “I am contacting you because I am entering hospice care and will likely die in the next few weeks.”
I know of Carol Saline, of course. She is the retired award-winning senior writer and editor for Philadelphia Magazine, best-selling author, TV and radio personality, and popular public speaker.
I write obituaries for The Inquirer. Why did she email me last week?
“Dear Gary,” she wrote. “I am contacting you because I am entering hospice care and will likely die in the next few weeks.”
Most often, families contact me after their loved one has died. They share achievements and memories, milestones and insights, many of which only close relatives would know. I share those stories with my readers.
Carol Saline is a storyteller, too. She has written eight books, including the best-selling trilogy Sisters, Mothers & Daughters, and Best Friends. She has published thousands of articles in many publications, including The Inquirer, and spoken hundreds of times to thousands of people about relationships, health, crime, cooking, theater, literacy, current events, and other topics.
She grew up in Camden and lives in Center City with her husband, Paul Rathblott. She is 86, and has a daughter, Sharon, and a son, Matthew, and acute myeloid leukemia. Why did she email me with her own obituary information?
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“It would be one less burden on my family right now if that were something they didn’t have to prepare,” she wrote.
And there was something else, she said, something that obits may help happen. It’s something for which we all seem to yearn, something that truly separates us and yet unites us, too.
“I wanted you to know me,” she wrote, “not only my accomplishments but who I am as a person.”
So who is Carol Saline?
She is an acknowledged expert on writing and public speaking. But, really, she likes to dig into all sorts of things: vaccines, cancer, sex for the aging, murder trials, exercise, and adoption. “It suits my personality to know a little about a lot of things,” she wrote.
She gets mesmerized by charismatic speakers but was jolted one night decades ago as then-Judge Lisa Richette addressed a gathering. “In one of those lightbulb moments, I realized I wanted to be where she was: inspiring the audience, not sitting in it.”
She loves theater and spent years on the board of the Philadelphia Theater Company. But some of her fondest memories of the stage are from long before that, in the 1940s. “I put on shows in my garage with my best friend, Roz Ominsky, when we were in elementary school.”
She was adept at extracting quotes in interviews that are dramatic, insightful, informative, and poignant. But none of them are more memorable for her than one uttered repeatedly by a fictional character. “I lived by a quote from Auntie Mame I have always adored. ‘Life is a banquet, and most poor bastards are starving.’ Well, I was the first person at the table and ate up life with gusto.”
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She was a host and featured guest at countless galas and public events around town. But her own home, with family and friends, is where her entertaining heart beats best. “I enjoyed setting a beautiful table and talking and laughing with those around it. If there were any excuse to celebrate something, I’d throw a party.”
She spent her adult life reporting on big issues and talking to celebrities and newsmakers. But she constantly refocuses on her own responsibilities. “Growing up, my father frequently repeated Hillel’s phrase, ‘If I am not for myself, who will be? If I am only for myself, what am I?’”
As for the future, tonight, tomorrow, or whenever, no one knows what it holds. But Carol Saline has a plan. “As I approach the expiration date of my life,” she wrote, “I want to go out with a glass of Champagne in one hand, a balloon in the other, singing (off key) ‘Whoopee! It’s been a great ride!’”