To place an obituary, please include the information from the obituary checklist below in an email to [email protected]. There is no option to place obituaries through our website. Feel free to contact our obituary desk at 651-228-5263 with any questions.
**General Information:**
– Your full name
– Address (City, State, Zip Code)
– Phone number
– An alternate phone number (if any)
**Obituary Specifications:**
– Name of Deceased
– Obituary Text
– A photo in a JPEG or PDF file is preferable. TIF and other files are accepted. We will contact you if there are any issues with the photo.
– Ad Run Dates
There is a discount for running more than one day, but this must be scheduled on the first run date to apply. If a photo is used, it must be used for both days for the discount to apply. Contact us for more information.
**Policies:**
*Verification of Death:*
In order to publish obituaries, the name and phone number of the funeral home or cremation society handling the arrangements is required. We must contact them during their business hours to verify the death.
If the body of the deceased has been donated to the University of Minnesota Anatomy Bequest Program, or a similar program, their phone number is required for verification. Please allow enough time to contact them, especially during their limited weekend hours.
A death certificate is also acceptable for verification, but only one of these two options is necessary.
*Guestbook and Outside Websites:*
We are not allowed to reference other media sources with a guestbook or an obituary placed elsewhere when placing an obituary in print and online. We may place a website for a funeral home or a family email for contact instead. Contact us with any questions regarding this matter.
**Obituary Process:**
Once your submission is complete, we will fax or email a proof for review prior to publication in the newspaper. This proof includes the price and the days the notice is scheduled to appear. Please review the proof carefully.
We must be notified of errors or changes before the notice appears in the Pioneer Press based on each day’s deadlines. After publication, we are not responsible for errors that may occur after final proofing.
*Online:* Changes to an online obituary can be handled through the obituary desk. Call us with further questions.
**Payment Procedure:**
Pre-payment is required for all obituary notices prior to publication by the deadline specified in our deadline schedule.
Please call 651-228-5263 with your payment information after you have received the proof and approved its contents.
– *Credit Card:* Payment accepted by phone only due to PCI (Payment Card Industry) regulations.
– *EFT:* Check by phone. Please provide your routing number and account number.
– *Cash:* Accepted at our front counter Monday through Friday from 8:00 AM to 3:30 PM.
**Rates:**
– The minimum charge is $162 for the first 10 lines.
– Every line after the first 10 is $12.20.
– If the ad is under 10 lines, it will be charged the minimum rate of $162.
– On a second run date, the lines are $8.20 per line, starting with the first line.
*Example:* If the first run date was 20 lines, the cost would be $164.
– Each photo published is $125 per day.
*Example:* 2 photos in the paper on 2 days would be 4 photo charges at $500.
**Deadlines:**
Please follow deadline times to ensure your obituary is published on the day requested.
| Hours | Deadline (no exceptions) | Ad Photos |
|—————–|————————–|————————-|
| (deadlines table not specified) | | |
—
### MEMORIAM (Non-Obituary) Request
Unlike an obituary, Memoriam submissions are remembrances of a loved one who has passed. The rates for a memoriam differ from obituaries.
Please call or email us for more memoriam information.
– Phone: 651-228-5280
– Hours: Monday – Friday 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM (Closed weekends and holidays)
– Email: [email protected]
—
### Editorial: A Vision for St. Paul’s Renewal
We love St. Paul. We worry about where the city stands and where it’s going — whether downtown, its neighborhoods, its schools, its businesses, its people.
There are public and private institutions discussing improvements, but no apparent inspiring vision or energized leadership pulling together the people and resources needed to get the job of renewal done.
We fear that we too are trapped in the doom-loop cycle beleaguering once-great American cities, where the loss of businesses, jobs, and services produces the lack of investment required for a rebirth of what we want as downtown.
This has become an intertwined economic, political, and psychological problem to resolve. Perhaps we are not asking the right questions about what needs fixing and what needs to be done.
With national trends of suburban movement, increased homelessness, political power shifting to suburban control, and the loss of corporate managers with ties not to our cities but to their golden parachutes, the cities may never return to the reality from which we seek to benefit and enjoy once again.
Perhaps St. Paul will require a new way of thinking about what a future city and downtown can and should become. We need inspiration, knowing that from inspiration comes leadership, and from leadership comes achievement.
What can be our vision?
St. Paul is about people, not money — it always has been. It is about families and communities. But therein lies a problem: St. Paul is a collection of communities, not really a city.
The assets of St. Paul are separated one from another like a pile of Lego pieces waiting to be assembled into a stunning construction. How do we assemble the pieces? Who will come up with the vision?
We cannot separate downtown from the vitality of our neighborhoods and the metropolitan context.
We are fortunate to have a multitude of existing resources. We have five strong colleges and universities, two law schools; we are located on a beautiful major river.
We have a health industry complex, state government, a History Center, and a Science Museum; parks, a zoo, and a soulful Japanese garden; theaters; The Ordway and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra; artists; weekend markets.
We have a history that forms the basis for tourism. We have an educated workforce. We have an increasingly international demography, producing the workforce, culture, restaurants, art, and ethnic mix of the present and future.
We have these existing resources without utilizing the two-way benefits of having the educational resources, river, ethnic composition, educated workforce, and strengths of people who love our city.
We have district councils which allow a higher level of participation for every citizen.
What we have not done is determine how to build the circular systems, where every citizen, resource, institution, and service is defined not as a cost or problem, but as a capital asset contributing to the larger community in tandem with all other capital assets — financial, educational, social, cultural.
We have hundreds of small businesses seeking to grow but more often worried about how to retain a few large corporations, some of whom can move on the decision of an absentee corporation without any familiar or historical ties to St. Paul.
We need to place more emphasis on strengthening our small businesses. If we wait for the city government to provide that leadership, we will fail.
The Caux Round Table for Moral Capitalism will soon convene a process to build the vision and framework for a citywide circular system. It will include representatives from public, private, informational, educational, and civic groups.
We have the potential to create the St. Paul of the future. The world has changed and we cannot reinvent the past.
We are St. Paulites. We love our city and the neighborhoods. We have problems which will not disappear but can be overcome with resolve, imagination, and the courage of our convictions.
We stand at the edge of a new frontier. As an admired president once told us:
“All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days, nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.”
*— Todd Lefko, Member of the Board, Caux Round Table for Moral Capitalism*
*— Stephen B. Young, Global Executive Director, Caux Round Table for Moral Capitalism*
https://www.twincities.com/2025/10/26/lefko-young-we-love-st-paul-and-we-worry-about-st-paul/