{"id":31508,"date":"2025-12-08T12:06:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T18:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/?p=31508"},"modified":"2025-12-08T12:06:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T18:06:11","slug":"obit-watch-december-8-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/?p=31508","title":{"rendered":"Obit watch: December 8, 2025."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.is\/pXhaz\" target=\"_blank\">Mary Kuczkir has passed away at the age of 92<\/a>. She was also (and better) known as &#8220;Fern Michaels&#8221;.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.is\/pXhaz\" target=\"_blank\">In her early years, Ms. Michaels wrote with a partner, Roberta Anderson, but took legal control of the pen name in 1989 and adopted it as her public persona in interviews. Her actual name was Mary Kuczkir.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.is\/pXhaz\" target=\"_blank\">As Ms. Michaels often described it, it took a steely resolve to embark on a writing career in her 40s. \u201cWhen my youngest went off to kindergarten,\u201d she recounted on her website, \u201cmy husband told me to get off my ass and get a job. Those were his exact words. I didn\u2019t know how to do anything except be a wife and mother.\u201d<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/archive.is\/pXhaz\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cRather than face the outside world with no skills,\u201d she added, \u201cI decided to write a book. As my husband said at the time, stupid is as stupid does. Guess what, I don\u2019t have that husband any more.\u201d The couple never divorced, but parted ways in the early 1970s.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mary Kuczkir has passed away at the age of 92. She was also (and better) known as &#8220;Fern Michaels&#8221;. In her early years, Ms. Michaels wrote with a partner, Roberta Anderson, but took legal control of the pen name in 1989 and adopted it as her public persona in interviews. Her actual name was Mary [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-obits"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31508"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31508\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31510,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31508\/revisions\/31510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}