For information on submitting an obituary, please contact Reading Eagle by phone at 610-371-5018, or email at obituaries@readingeagle.com or fax at 610-371-5193.
Most obituaries published in the Reading Eagle are submitted through funeral homes and cremation services, but we will accept submissions from families. Obituaries can be emailed to obituaries@readingeagle.com.
In addition to the text of the obituary, any photographs that you wish to include can be attached to this email. Please put the text of the obituary in a Word document, a Google document or in the body of the email. The Reading Eagle also requires a way to verify the death, so please include either the phone number of the funeral home or cremation service that is in charge of the deceased’s care or a photo of his/her death certificate. We also request that your full name, phone number and address are all included in this email.
All payments by families must be made with a credit card. We will send a proof of the completed obituary before we require payment. The obituary cannot run, however, until we receive payment in full.
Obituaries can be submitted for any future date, but they must be received no later than 3:00 p.m. the day prior to its running for it to be published.
Please call the obituary desk, at 610-371-5018, for information on pricing.
Kylene Laity remembers well the “press firmly” era of entering the variety of contests at the Oley Valley Community Fair.
“The entrants would have to fill out a three-part tag that had carbon paper in the middle of each piece of the tag and were instructed to ‘press firmly’ while using a ball-point pen,” she said with a sigh.
All of those tags were split apart, collated, cataloged and filed by hand.
Laity, technology director for the fair, helped usher in the “tap lightly” era on a keyboard, as the fair went to computerized systems starting in 1998.
Over the years, the system has been updated twice with computer-based software. This year, a new web-based system, Fair Entry, is being implemented.
That’s the same software used by the Farm Show in Harrisburg, Laity said.
There are still a lot of the old ways mixed with the new, though.
“It’s very labor intensive,” Laity said before an orientation session with the dozen or so volunteers who tap out the entries into the system.
Entrants can now email their entry or bring it in or mail it in the old-fashioned way, and one of the volunteers will enter the information for them.
Last year, 6,991 entries were processed for the fair.
The rush begins on the Friday night the week before the fair opens and extends through the weekend as the entries are received.
Then there are check-in nights on the Monday and Tuesday before the fair when the people bring their entries and pick up their tags.
“We print all the tags for everyone,” Laity said, “They come in, they pick them up, they enter their items, and then they love coming back to see if they won or not.”
That’s the best part, said Laity.
“They’re so excited when they get here, and they’re ready to place their entry.”
Plus, there are the checks that need to be printed for the prize winners.
Last year, the Oley Fair awarded $28,540 in premium money.
The new software system will automatically create the checks for the prize winners, saving the effort of writing them out by hand.
All Laity asks is patience.
“All of us are volunteers,” she said. ”We always say, ‘Be patient,’ because we’re all trying to learn and understand what the new system is and work through all the kinks.”