How do I find out when someone died?

June 17, 2013 2:11 PM

I'm pretty sure I spent two days confusing two different people named William F. Kruse. There's the William F. Kruse listed here in Wikipedia that belonged to the Communist Party and then joined Bell and Howell. He died in 1952 and has an archive in the Chronicling Illinois Collection. I thought THAT Kruse might also be the William F. Kruse who was writing for Educational Screen in the 1950s, because of the Bell and Howell connection. But now I don't think so because that Kruse was also writing educational technology histories into the late 1960s. But there his trail ends. Is there a best approach to finding out when someone died?
posted by PHINC to Computers & Internet (18 answers total)

You might try ancestry.com I don't have a subscription or I would do the search right now, but someone you know might. It can give you the death dates and a bunch of other details (career, spouse, place of birth, dob, etc) with which you can cross-reference to make sure you've got the right person.
posted by ImproviseOrDie at 2:17 PM on June 17, 2013

Is there a burial site? If so, what is written on the tombstone?
posted by oceanjesse at 2:21 PM on June 17, 2013

If someone was in the Social Security system, their death will be recorded in the Social Security Death Index (SSDI), which can be searched free at some genealogy sites including Genealogy Bank. Searching for William F. Kruse, death dates 1950-1980, on that site turns up only William F. Kruse, born May 14 1916, died Feb. 15, 1974 in Cook County, Illinois. (Reload and read fast before the popup loads). So that would be Kruse 2. Kruse 1 (the Communist) doesn't show up in SSDI.

Now, the problem is that Wikipedia doesn't cite a source for Kruse 1's death in 1952. Some other sites agree with 1952 but also have no source. Intriguingly, another Google Books listing describes Kruse 1, the communist, as "the camera man of the American Communists". Wikipedia does conflate 1 and 2, stating that 1 rejected radical politics and joined up with Bell and Howell (again without citation.)

So I'm thinking that Kruse, the communist, gave up the cause in 1929, became a movie guy, died in 1952 (check with Stanford), some of your 1950s/60s cites are posthumous, and the SSDI listing is somebody else.
posted by beagle at 3:42 PM on June 17, 2013

Searching for William F. Kruse, death dates 1950-1980, on that site turns up only William F. Kruse, born May 14 1916, died Feb. 15, 1974 in Cook County, Illinois.

There are more. Searching FamilySearch produces some more William F Kruses. This may be the birth of the guy in the Wikipedia article, but both of his parents are German. This is a William Kruse born November 1894 dying in January 1980, with a Social Security number issued in Illinois, but there's no reason he isn't this William Kruse, who appears to have been born in 1894 in Illinois.

There are 79 William Kruses in the Social Security Death Index born between 1890 and 1900 who died between 1950 and 1990. (And four or five born in 1894, but I don't know that we should trust Wikipedia. The ones who died in 1971 and 1980 have Illinois Social Security numbers. The one with no birthdate who died in 1950 has an Iowa number.) It's hard to narrow it down reliably because all these William Kruses obviously didn't get Social Security numbers when they were born, but where they lived in 1936 or 1937. (According to Wikipedia, it wasn't until 1986 that it was usual to get a Social Security number soon after being born! I had no idea.) But there were an a fair few William Kruses who got their Social Security numbers in Illinois, which is where it sounds like the one you care about may have been.

But it sounds like you should probably just phone Stanford and the Abraham Lincoln Library. If they both hold 'his' papers, there quite possibly are two different William Kruses interesting enough for a library to have their papers and surely each place knows whose papers they have.
posted by hoyland at 4:22 PM on June 17, 2013

Others have been on this case. Click here and follow "Next in Thread".
posted by beagle at 5:09 PM on June 17, 2013

Response by poster: Wow, well, it's good to know I'm not the only on that's been confused by the multiple Kruses. I did contact Stanford and they told me they did not have the William Kruse archives. In the thread from beagle there seems to speculation that William Kruse Sr., the former communist, was the son of William Kruse Jr., the writer for Educational Screen. And that both had careers of some kind in educational technology.

I'm working on a history of audiovisual communication and a William Kruse was an archivist for the Department of Audio Visual Instruction in the 50s. He later wrote an unpublished history of the field. So, there's quite a bit you can find on him but his death and possible relation to other Kruses escapes me.

All of the threads listed her are wonderful and I am grateful for your input.
posted by PHINC at 6:48 PM on June 17, 2013

This is relevant to my interests! I actually worked for a division of Bell+Howell some years back, but wouldn't have any access to anyone with corporate archives, alas. I wonder if I ever worked in what had been his office....
Also, too bad my uncle is deceased; he worked in journalism in Chicago and seemed to know everyone back in the day.

Working-Class Hollywood: Silent Film and the Shaping of Class in America suggests that post-expulsion he worked at B+H making educational films "for the next seventeen years", bringing us to 1946, at which time the film library was "sold to Universal", and he became a vice president in that studio's non-theatrical division.

Inventing Film Studies discusses his activities with the Film Council of America (now defunct/merged?), an early coordinator and clearinghouse of the educational film market. Here his former employer seems also to have been involved, so those connections were valuable. One may be surprised that the FCA seems never to have been labeled a front. And it was distributing films to Rotary clubs!

On the Left in America: Memoirs of the Scandinavian-American Labor Movement apparently ran into similar documentation issues, saying "he survived at least until 1958, when he was interviewed by Theodore Draper" American Communism and Soviet Russia (the notes for which place the date as April 27, 1958 explicitly, with a letter exchange in May). So we can know that 1952 is wrong in any case.

There are a handful of periodical references in Film News, including what may be his actual obituary from 1979, which states that he "died in a nursing home after a succession of strokes". As always, GB snippets leave out crucial information, but this may be something that a college library could obtain in print.
posted by dhartung at 4:14 AM on June 18, 2013

OK, the notes for Working-Class Hollywood say
For further biographical information about Kruse, see transcript of William F. Kruse interview with Tom Brandon, May 20, 1975, Indianapolis, and Bill Kruse to Thomas Brandon, July 5, 1978, 1189, Brandon Coll.

So if you want his life story, that seems to be where to look.
posted by dhartung at 4:34 AM on June 18, 2013

Response by poster: Thanks dhartung, that 79 obit seems especially hopeful and I'm going to hunt down a copy of that ASAP. I've read Theodore Draper's account of Kruse and it has him traveling to Moscow and meeting Stalin in the 20s.
I love Kruse's story: From communist, kicked out of the party to educational technologist and film maker, just fascinating!
posted by PHINC at 10:01 AM on June 18, 2013

Response by poster: So, what is 1189 Brando Coll here referencing?
posted by PHINC at 11:28 AM on June 18, 2013

I read it as "Brandon Collection", i.e. personal papers. As I imagine by now he's deceased, some tracking down may be necessary, but the 1189 sounds like a box number.
posted by dhartung at 12:37 PM on June 18, 2013

Response by poster: Evidently all things Kruse can be found in the MOMA Film Studies Collection, the Thomas Brandon, film distributor, Collection.
posted by PHINC at 12:53 PM on June 19, 2013 [1 favorite]

PHINC, bad link in that last comment, can you fix?

The dhartung obit link is not necessarily 1979, Google Books is notoriously bad in citing the pub dates of periodicals. I'm going to put my money on our Bill as being this guy, who died in Indianapolis in 1980, not 1979. Born 1894, which seems to correspond with several other sources. SSDI has 4 other William Kruses born 1894 but this one has the most plausible death date/location.

Please keep us posted. I'm always intrigued when we can right the record on someone like this.
posted by beagle at 6:08 PM on June 19, 2013

Following up: via dhartung's "notes" link above, the Working Class Hollywood book p. 155 cites his birth as November 1894. The William Kruse who died Indianapolis 1980 was born Nov. 1894.
posted by beagle at 6:15 PM on June 19, 2013 [1 favorite]

beagle, I strongly suspect that's the same guy. It's Vol. 36, which is probably 1979-1980. It can't be too much earlier because the snippet view shows something quoting the Australian Library Journal from May 5, 1978. The date thing happens when you have an entire periodical indexed by the founding or earliest available date in a single archive, but it's clear from other indicators that the timing is right here. Certainly the coincidence of careers would require a disambiguation somewhere in contemporary sources if there were two people with such similar interests and professional connections, even more plausibly for a father and son.

Here's the MoMA link.
posted by dhartung at 4:42 AM on June 20, 2013

Response by poster: I think getting a look at the interview in the MOMA archives would help to answer some questions and I sent off for the rest of that obituary from Film News which hopefully will be helpful.

A William F Kruse helped to organize the Association of Educational Communications and Technology archives that are held at the University of Maryland. He was named archivist for the organization in the early 50s and was still archiving materials in the later 50s acccording to this article from Educational Screen (Personal link). The archive also contains a short history of the field by Kruse.

I've had the same experience with other educational technology historians I've studied. I've found it really difficult to find anything on Paul Saetttler who wrote the most extensive history of the field.

But no one's story seems as potentially interesting as Kruse's. It's like something out of a Cohen Brother's film!
posted by PHINC at 10:04 AM on June 20, 2013

Response by poster: Kruse's obit from the Spring 1980 Film News.
No dates and nothing about communist activity but a lot of other connections there. An age would have been nice.
posted by PHINC at 12:37 PM on June 20, 2013

Response by poster: Hi,
In case anyone is still following this I finally visited the MOMA archives and looked at 1189 Brando Coll, which is a folder on Kruse in the Brandon Collection. Kruse was a communist and then an audio-visual man, and archivist for what eventually became AECT.
posted by PHINC at 10:32 AM on October 24, 2013