James R. (Bob) Hagerty: Tell Your Own Life Story – or Someone Else Will

In this week’s 4-Quarter Lives, Avivah Wittenberg-Cox talks with James R. (Bob) Hagerty, longtime journalist and obituary writer for The Wall Street Journal. After a 40-year career covering business and markets across New York, London, Hong Kong, and Paris, James found an unexpected calling - writing obituaries that capture the richness of lives well-lived. Through more than a thousand obituaries, he’s uncovered what gets remembered, what gets lost, and why we should all take the time to write our own life stories. In this conversation, he and Avivah explore the power of memoir writing—not just for those who come after us, but for ourselves. Why do so many of us wait too long to reflect on our own journeys? How can writing our own stories help us make sense of the choices we’ve made and even shape our futures? And how does storytelling preserve both personal and collective history?

James’ book, Yours Truly, makes the case for taking our own narratives into our hands before others summarize them for us.

James R. (Bob) Hagerty is based in Pittsburgh and writes obituaries and other feature stories for The Wall Street Journal. Over the past four decades, he also has worked as a reporter, editor and bureau chief for the Journal and the International Herald Tribune in Hong Kong, London, Brussels, Paris, Atlanta and New York. He served as managing editor of The Wall Street Journal's Asian edition and London bureau chief of the WSJ. In addition to his journalism, James is the author of The Fateful History of Fannie Mae (History Press 2012), and Yours Truly, An Obituary Writer’s Guide to Telling Your Story (Kensington's Citadel Press, 2022), a book on how to tell life stories. He holds a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of North Dakota.

Some Useful Links:

* Buy Your’s Truly (Amazon USA)

* Buy Your’s Truly (Amazon UK)