To place an obituary, please include the information from the obituary checklist below in an email to obits@pioneerpress.com. There is no option to place them 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,
And an alternate phone number (if any)
Obituary Specification:
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 a name and phone number of funeral home/cremation society is required. We must contact the funeral home/cremation society handling the arrangements 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 this purpose but only one of these two options are 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 completed, we will fax or email a proof for review prior to publication in the newspaper. This proof includes price and 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 will not be 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 below 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 – Friday from 8:00AM – 3:30PM
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 w/ the first line.
For example: if first run date was 20 lines the cost would be $164.
Each photo published is $125 per day.
For 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
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
Please call 651-228-5280 for more information.
HOURS: Monday – Friday 8:00AM – 5:00PM (CLOSED WEEKENDS and HOLIDAYS)
Please submit your memoriam ad to memoriams@pioneerpress.com or call 651-228-5280.
Veteran TV and radio broadcaster Stan Turner believed that preparation was the key to any successful interview, TV broadcast or radio show.
In 1983, for example, Turner spent days preparing for an interview with President Ronald Reagan. He assembled a thick file on the president that included clippings, facts and questions to ask, said longtime friend Tom Oszman.
“Stan always wanted to do quality work,” said Oszman, who runs TC Media Now, a nonprofit dedicated to digitizing local TV broadcasts. “He would prepare for his show all morning, probably even before he came in with lots of papers. He knew about his guests. He knew about their history. He was very factually correct. He was very prepared. He didn’t just come in and turn the microphone on.”
Turner died Sunday at Our Lady of Peace Hospice in St. Paul of complications related to breast cancer. He was 81.
Turner had one of those voices that was instantly recognizable, Oszman said. “He loved telling stories. He loved telling stories about people in our community. I think that we have lost one of the great storytellers of our area.”
Turner told the Pioneer Press in 2018 that his love of journalism was sparked by reading “My Weekly Reader,” the educational classroom magazine, while he was growing up in St. Louis Park. “I just loved reading about things and then telling other kids what I had found out because I knew they weren’t reading it,” Turner said. “It sounds corny, but that’s how I got into it. I love telling stories.”
Turner was born to be a journalist, said his daughter, Laura Turner Schubkegel, who lives in Woodbury. “My dad just had this uncanny, insatiable thirst for knowledge, facts and reporting. And that voice of his. He’s always had it. It was authoritative and believable. You knew you could believe this man. It was very credible. Trusting, that’s the word. Oh, and it was smooth. Just like butter.”
Turner majored in journalism at the University of Minnesota and, while still a student, got a job in the news department at KDWB Radio after splicing together an audition tape at his childhood home in St. Louis Park. He moved to KSTP Radio News in 1966, then was hired back at KDWB as news director a year later. He returned to Hubbard Broadcasting in 1968, taking a job as government reporter for KSTP-TV.
“That’s when he found his niche, covering government and the political scene,” Schubkegel said. “That’s where he really wanted to be. He just loved the truth. He loved the action. He liked the two sides in the chambers going at it, trying to pass bills. He found that fascinating, and he made a lot of friends at the Capitol. Politics just really resonated with him. People trusted him. He knew that was the most important thing.”
Turner, who taught an Introduction to Radio and Television Journalism class at the University of St. Thomas, always stressed the importance of impartiality and fair and balanced reporting, said KSTP chief political reporter Tom Hauser, one of Turner’s students. “He always said that the story is the story. The reporter is not the story,” Hauser said. “He would say, ‘People don’t care what you think. They care what the people you interview think.’ I’ve always kept that in mind, and that’s how I report the news.”
Turner also believed that “reporters and photographers are the backbone of any news operation,” Hauser said. “An anchor just kind of throws to what the reporters are out in the field doing. He always felt that nothing was more important than covering what the government is doing with your taxpayer dollars and with policies they are passing.”
An innovator
Turner served as KSTP’s associate news director, weekend anchor, news director and weekday co-anchor before he was hired, in 1989, to help launch a 24-hour satellite news channel for Hubbard Broadcasting called the All News Channel, where he served as primetime weekday anchor and writer. He lost his job when the channel went off the air in 2002.
Turner was “an innovator and a great broadcaster and a great newsman,” said Stan Hubbard, the chairman of Hubbard Broadcasting, which owns KSTP.
“It’s a terrible loss,” Hubbard said Monday. “Stan was a wonderful person. He was a hard-working, dedicated newsperson who was not afraid to go after the truth. He was always very prepared. He was terrific. Everything he did was good.”
In 2004, Turner became news director, reporter, and newscaster with the Minnesota News Network. He also began hosting a Saturday program on KLBB-AM Radio in downtown Stillwater. His “All Request and Dedication Show” soon took the noon to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday slot.
Turner’s time at KLBB was a gift to everyone in the east metro and beyond, said Don Effenberger, a longtime friend and former Pioneer Press editor.
“While there’s all this well-deserved attention to Stan’s newsgathering and all his news jobs, I wouldn’t want it to be forgotten what he did for the east metro community with his KLBB shows, both that Saturday show he did and of course, the ‘All Request’ one,” Effenberger said. “Stan found so much joy in music and sharing it with people, and I think that’s what made the show so popular.”
Turner told the Pioneer Press that his love of music came through “osmosis” when he was a baby. “I had eczema, a terrible skin rash, when I was born, and I almost died from it,” he said in 2018. “It was tough to get me to take naps or get to sleep because I hurt all the time, so my mother would roll the crib over by the radio, and that would help me go to sleep. I think that’s part of it. I just absolutely adore music.”
Among his favorite artists: Johnny Mathis, Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison, Chuck Berry and Fats Domino. His favorite Presley song was “Loving You,” he told the Pioneer Press. “I like lyrics. I like melody,” he said. “I like words I can repeat.”
Here’s part of the playlist from one of his “Request and Dedication” shows on KLBB in 2018: country star Terri Gibbs, Chuck Berry, novelty songs, Motown, some Johnny Mathis, local chanteuse Sharone LeMieux and Guy Marks singing “Loving You Has Made Me Bananas.”
Each song had a story, one that was meticulously researched by Turner. His music library filled his KLBB office and included “Billboard’s Hottest 100 Hits,” “The Encyclopedia of Pop, Rock and Soul” and “American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900-1950.”
“I love doing research. This is my bible right here,” Turner told the Pioneer Press at the time, pointing to “The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits.” “I find out information people wouldn’t otherwise get or have or know. I call them ‘Eureka moments.’
“To me, this is a logical extension of being a reporter, which I’ve been all of my life,” he said. “We are hunters and gatherers.”
Turner’s popular show ended in March 2018 when KLBB went off the air. “He was a loyalist,” Oszman said. “He did that show till KLBB closed; it was not canceled. He did the All News Channel until they went off the air. He stayed with companies until they were done, and he had a 35-year track record at Hubbard. He was at KLBB for about 14 years. He was a loyal guy, a loyal friend, and a loyal employee.”
A ‘St. Paul guy’
Turner was a “St. Paul guy through and through,” said Rick Shefchik, former Pioneer Press reporter, columnist and media critic. “As a radio newsman, he became intimately knowledgeable about politicians, lawmaking and legislators at the Capitol,” Shefchik said. “When he moved to TV in the late 1970s, he was one of the key faces in a fiercely competitive TV news market at a time when local anchors became celebrities.”
But Turner was “never taken with his own importance, being a news reporter to his soul,” Shefchik said.
Turner clearly reveled in his years hosting the “All Request and Dedication Show” on KLBB, said Shefchik, a frequent guest and the author of “Everybody’s Heard About the Bird: The True Story of 1960s Rock ‘n’ Roll in Minnesota.”
“When a famous musician died, Stan would meticulously assemble a tribute show, and took great satisfaction in researching the background of even the most obscure songs requested by his loyal listeners,” Shefchik said.
Turner said: “In this day and age of hard, jagged corners and nasty rhetoric and everything, it’s nice to connect to this every day, isn’t it? I am lucky. I’ve always known that. From Day One. I never have taken this for granted.”
Turner met Ruth Juneau Huberty, a part-time weather reporter and office manager at KDWB, when he worked there in 1965; she was a divorced mother of two children, John and Katie, whom he later adopted. The couple got married in 1966; their daughter, Laura, was born the following year. The couple divorced in 1981.
Turner is survived by his children, Laura Schubkegel, Katherine Urich, and John Turner, and his longtime companion, Mary Brennan.
A celebration of Turner’s life will be held at a later date. Wulff Funeral Home in Woodbury is handling arrangements.