Obituary Lists Man's Cause Of Death As 'Uppercut By Batman'
WINTER GARDEN, Fla. (CBS Miami) - When a Florida family had to come up with a cause of death for a newspaper obituary, they came up with something more fitting for a Gotham City villain, reports WFTS-TV.
Stephen Merrill died on Feb. 12 at the age of 31 after a long fight with cancer.
But doctors had not yet given his family and friends an official cause of death when they went to a funeral home in Winter Garden.
"Everyone was starting to get a little tense. We didn't have a cause of death, but we were told we had to have one (for the newspaper)," Brandon Moxam, a close friend of Merrill, told WFTS.
So family and friends threw around ideas until they found one they thought he would have liked.
"I made a joke," said Moxam, "Say the cause of death was an 'uppercut from Batman.'"
Everyone agreed that Merrill would have wanted to be remembered that way because of his love for comic books and superheroes.
After a convincing the editors they were serious about the joke, The Ledger printed the obituary on Sunday.
"He would have been honored to have died by an uppercut from Batman," said Merrill's fiancee, Stephanie Vella.
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