Tomorrow an obituary will go out that says a man died on July 2, 2009.

That’s right. Technically he died in the future, although his funeral is tomorrow.

The paper is printed and labels are being attached to the July 1 edition of the Lebanon Express as I write this. There is little that can be done with the July 1 print version at this point.

How could we make such a mistake? I’m not sure. The obituary was proofed by four sets of eyes, yet we still missed it. Although we did catch that the funeral home said the 85-year-old man was born on March 24, 2009 (and fixed that) this mistake in the actual text of the obituary slipped passed us.

We regret the mistake and have fixed it for tomorrow’s online version… But the print edition?

We will reprint the obituary on July 8 and I have fixed it so the date is correct on our website.

Like I said, you can’t stop a moving train.

UPDATE: We received an updated version of the obituary from the funeral home today, July 1. The corrected version said he died July 27, 2009.