The Amazing Web

My primary occupation is freelance writing, which I have been hard at since 1984.  Prior to that I worked for two major corporations as a writer.  The Internet has made what I do much easier.  A great example of what I mean occurred yesterday.

I'm working on a story about a quarry lake in Brookfield, Wisconsin, that once was run by a sand and gravel company.  I put the name of the company into  Google which took me to an obituary section from 1976 that appeared in a Madison, Wisconsin, newspaper. 

Amazingly, there was an obituary listed for the owner of the sand and gravel company who had died at age 54.  A number of relatives were listed so I did an online search and came up with the phone number for a sister (actually, it turned out, a half sister) who lived in the Madison area.  I called and reached her; she was friendly and gave me the number of the man's wife, who now lives in Florida.

Wow.

Soon I was speaking with her, and she was friendly, too.

I don't know how or even why this obituary page from 36 years ago was indexed, but it saved me countless hours of work.