By Cole Imperi
NSNC Member
I am a Thanatologist, someone who studies death and dying.
I’m definitely the only one of those in my family.
My work in this field eventually led me towards genealogy, which is, essentially, the study of the dead. Who were these dead people I descended from, anyway? For many family genealogists, the exploration of ancestry is an exercise in finding belonging. It certainly has been that for me.
In college, I studied Journalism. (I’m the only one of those in my family, too.) My final thesis was on telephone poles. I felt there was something extremely suspect about them, and both me and my advisor were surprised to find that that hunch was correct.
During that same time, I skated roller derby, had a morning radio show, and charged a plane ticket to Australia to my credit card. I have never been able to turn down a potential adventure.
After moving back to Cincinnati in my early 20s, I settled in a neighborhood called Oakley. I lived there for seven years and was involved with the Oakley business association.
In my mid-20s, I completed post-graduate work in Typeface Design. I’d been playing with typefaces since I was a kid—I was obsessed with fonts. I found it endlessly entertaining to pore over a font menu. I still do. My first-ever conversation with my husband was (sadly?) about fonts. As a preteen, I created a family newsletter for my Mom’s side of the family, writing about the happenings in the various branches of our family tree and always included a miscellany section. Sometimes, I would even publish my own songs. My Mom would print copies and distribute them to all the Aunts and Uncles. It was my first readership.
I did a few issues in high school, but that fizzled out because I was appointed the “Diversity Editor” on my high school’s newspaper. I used that role to do what I had always done, write about what I thought was interesting. It was definitely diverse.
My study of death and dying has been with me my entire adult life. It has never been motivated by a morbid interest in the macabre but instead because it always reveals the truth. And, any journalist understands that the pursuit of truth is always a great adventure.
Back to genealogy. I discovered a cousin! A living one, at that! We connected and, one morning, in the midst of a pandemic, we were two branches on the same tree, getting to know each other. This conversation changed my life. I found out that I do belong, and I do make sense. Pieces of my life started to make sense, and this column will start to make more sense now, too.
My Great-Grandfather William Wersel was the son of an Alsatian Mother and a Dutch Father. After living in Brazil for three years (while my Dutch Great-Great-Grandfather wallpapered a Brazilian Palace in Rio de Janeiro—turns out he couldn’t turn down an adventure, either), they moved to Cincinnati, where I live today.
My Great-Grandfather William was an explorer of the unknown as well. He went on an expedition to the Thunder Mountains of Idaho in 1902 in a search for gold, got lost for a week, and nearly died. The Cincinnati Enquirer ran a story about it, it was so riveting. After he came back from that trip, guess where he settled down? Oakley. In fact, he was one of the founders, and served as the City Clerk for decades. I walked the streets he helped plan and served on the same business committee he founded.
And speaking of the Cincinnati Enquirer, I interned there while in Journalism school. I guess they were so impressed with my sleuthing on telephone poles that they assigned me to something as challenging as…the horoscope page. Honestly, it was very much my speed. That page was always a mix. It would have horoscopes, celebrity birthdays, room for miscellany, and leftover sentences from the far corners of that day’s paper. I loved it.
You know who else loved that sort of thing? My Great-Uncle Henry Wersel (William’s brother). He worked at the Cincinnati Enquirer for 54 years as a, get this—typesetter. Then, he was a columnist! He had a column called The Why & Wherefore for 12 years. It was a column about whatever he wanted. He would answer reader’s questions, share miscellany, and even publish songs he wrote.
I cannot describe the sense of rootedness I felt as I pulled up all of his old columns. Finding those columns was only possible because of the NSNC, actually. Turns out, that free one-year subscription to Newspapers.com really came in handy!
When Henry died in 1936, the Cincinnati Enquirer ran his obituary right on the front page. He died with his final (and never published) column, in his breast pocket. I don’t know what kind of grief it is when you feel what I felt in that moment of discovery. I had, in just a few hours, found someone in my family tree I felt deeply connected to, and, with it, a sense of belonging I had never experienced. I see so much of myself in him.
It’s interesting what information like this does to a person. My experience in Journalism school? My internship at the Cincinnati Enquirer? My own column-writing? My life in Oakley? I no longer would tell those parts of my story in quite the same way. You see, I was actually just following in the footsteps of my Great-Uncle Henry—a Columnist—and my Great-Grandfather William—an Adventurer.
I am not my family’s first columnist, typesetter, journalist, explorer, or civic-minded citizen, after all.
I’m still my family’s first Thanatologist, though.
*Editor’s Note: Newspapers.com was a conference sponsor in 2019 when all attendees received free one-year subscriptions to their site.
