A Daughter’s Hilarious Obituary Unravels her Father’s Mysterious Life

Rick Stein’s obituary ran last week in Delaware Online. The article was written by his daughter Alex Walsh who claims that her father had a healthy appetite for humor as well as life itself. The tale speaks of a man who disappeared in a single-engine plane over the Atlantic Ocean after learning he had cancer. “Security footage shows Stein leaving the building at approximately 3:30 Thursday afternoon, but then the video feed mysteriously cuts off.”

Walsh, 45, a former television news writer in Washington, D.C., wrote that, “It seems no one in his life knew his exact occupation.” Stein’s brother is sure that he did not know how to pilot and that they owned a jewelry and Oriental rug gallery together. His sister says she thought Stein was a cartoonist and freelance television critic for the New Yorker. The rest of the family seemed at odds of what their patriarch did with his time, as well.

His wife of 14 years and Walsh’s stepmother, Susan Stein, could not be interviewed about her husband’s disappearance. “[N]eighbors say they witnessed her leaving the home the couple shared wearing dark sunglasses and a fedora, loading multiple suitcases into her car. FAA records show she purchased a pair of one-way tickets to Rome which was Mr. Stein’s favorite city. An anonymous source with the airline reports the name used to book the other ticket was Juan Morefore DeRoad, which, according to the FBI, was an alias Stein used for many years.”

Alex Walsh then finished the obituary with, “That is one story. Another story is that Rick never left the hospital and died peacefully with his wife and his daughter holding tightly to his hands.”

See Allison Klein, A Daughter’s Hilarious Obituary Unravels her Father’s Mysterious Life. You Have to Read to the End to Get it, Washington Post, October 11, 2018.