No sniggers, please

My hat is off to Bill McKelway.

His story in the morning paper was straightforward, journeyman journalism.

I’m not sure many reporters could have kept as straight a face as McKelway did in the telling of a bizarre tale that sounds like something out of the old Ripley’s Believe It or Not, which specialized in stories about two-headed  calves and the like.

Here’s McKelway’s story, in my words, not his. (The full account is available at http://tinyurl.com/k2woz9h.)

There was a fire just after noon at a crematory yesterday in Richmond. It happened when the crematory’s smokestack overheated and apparently set the roof on fire.

Why did the smokestack overheat?

Because the body being cremated at the time weighed 800 pounds.

The crematory manager said the body produced “excessive heat and oil” during the process.

(That only seems logical to me. There’s bound to be a lot of fat on an 800-pound cadaver. Cremating it was probably a lot like throwing a lit match into a puddle of gasoline. But McKelway didn’t go there, although the temptation must have been almost overwhelming.)

The crematory in question is not without experience in reducing large bodies to ashes. McKelway’s story quoted the manager as saying the facility is known across Virginia for handling “large people.”

But 800 pounds?! The mind boggles.

Firemen put the blaze out within minutes. Nobody was hurt, and damage was confined to the roof. McKelway quoted the manager: “There was no damage to the body that would not be normal.” (Imagine sitting at a keyboard in a busy newsroom and typing that sentence.)

The cremation was to continue yesterday afternoon after firemen had left the scene, the manager said.

McKelway told the story with nary a suggestion of a smirk or a giggle and without any hint of an innuendo or double entendre that might have seemed appropriate to a lesser scribe.

McKelway knows what all good journalists know: The facts speak for themselves, and sometimes all the reporter has to do is stay out of the way of the story.

McKelway did exactly that -- and readers were left to have their own reactions to this extraordinary tale as they savored their coffee this morning.