The story behind the "most bad ass obit ever"

“I have something really fun for you,” New York Times deputy obituaries editor Jack Kadden told Margalit Fox last Monday.

 

He handed the obit writer a copy of Adam Bernstein’s Washington Post piece on “professional adventurer” John Fairfax, who died Feb. 8.

Reading the obit, says Fox, “you could see immediately what a fantastic ripping good yarn this was” — one involving a man who left home at 13 to “live like Tarzan,” became a pirate’s apprentice and went on to become the first person in recorded history to row alone across the Atlantic Ocean.