Actually, I will be stunned if this is not the obit of the year. Swedish immigrant Pehr Bolling, who passed away Monday at the age of 88, lived well:

• jumped into the Chicago River (in March of 1939) to save a suicidal man, "slugged" him after he fought, and dragged him back to shore
• was a mapmaker in World War II
• turned an old lifeboat into a one-ton Viking ship as something to do in retirement.

Trevor Jensen has done some outstanding work on what can be a thankless beat, and it is a shame that I had to click through to News Obituaries (it's on the homepage, the second-to-last item under News on the nav bar) to find it when Mary Schmich's data-scrape got front-and-center placement yesterday. If, in the future, our histories will be written primarily from our social networking profiles, that is a future I do not want a part of.

My only complaint is that video for the launch of the Viking ship exists, yet neither it nor even a picture is on their Web site.