Writing Eulogies

There are many other points you need to know about writing a eulogy speech, but using a story to help you get started will take away some of the pressure in creating a great tribute to your loved one.

From the first day of his life, John seemed to belong not only to our family, but to the American family. The whole world knew his name before he did. A famous photograph showed John racing across the lawn as his father landed in the White House helicopter and swept up John in his arms. When my brother saw that photo, he exclaimed, "Every mother in the United States is saying, 'Isn't it wonderful to see that love between a son and his father, the way that John races to be with his father.' Little do they know, that son would have raced right by his father to get to that helicopter."
But John was so much more than those long ago images emblazoned in our minds. He was a boy who grew into a man with a zest for life and a love of adventure. He was a pied piper who brought us all along. He was blessed with a father and mother who never thought anything mattered more than their children.
We thank the millions who have rained blossoms down on John's memory. He and his bride have gone to be with his mother and father, where there will never be an end to love. He was lost on that troubled night, but we will always wake for him, so that his time, which was not doubled, but cut in half, will live forever in our memory, and in our beguiled and broken hearts. We dared to think, in that other Irish phrase, that this John Kennedy would live to comb gray hair, with his beloved Carolyn by his side. But like his father, he had every gift but length of years. We who have loved him from the day he was born, and watched the remarkable man he became, now bid him farewell.
God bless you, John and Carolyn. We love you and we always will.

U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy

On the desk of the Oval Office, President Truman kept under glass the one-word telegram Bob sent him following his dramatic upset of Tom Dewey. It read: "unpack."
When another President - Abraham Lincoln - died in the house across the street from Ford's Theater, his Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, standing at Lincoln's side, said "Now he belongs to the ages."
The same is equally true of Bob Hope.
He is not America's - he is the world's.
He belongs not to our age, but to all ages.
And yet, even though he belongs to all time and to all peoples, he is our own, for he was quintessentially American.

- U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein Aug. 27, 2003

For Steve Irwin

My Daddy was my hero - he was always there for me when I needed him. He listened to me and taught me so many things, but most of all he was fun.
I know that Daddy had an important job. He was working to change the world so everyone would love wildlife like he did. He built a hospital to help animals and he bought lots of land to give animals a safe place to live.
He took me and my brother and my Mum with him all the time.
We filmed together, caught crocodiles together and loved being in the bush together.
I don't want Daddy's passion to ever end. I want to help endangered wildlife just like he did.
I have the best Daddy in the whole world and I will miss him every day. When I see a crocodile I will always think of him and I know that Daddy made this zoo so everyone could come and learn to love all the animals. Daddy made this place his whole life and now it's our turn to help Daddy.

- Bindi Irwin

"So little done, So much to do",
Alexander Graham Bell - Inventor

"All my possessions for a moment of time",
Elizabeth I - Queen of England

Bury me where the birds will sing over my grave
Alex Wilson - Ornithologist

"Get my swan costume ready",
Anna Pavlova - Ballet dancer

"So the heart be right 'tis no matter which way the head lieth",
Sir Walter Raleigh - British buccaneer, at his execution

"I expect I shall have to die beyond my means",
Oscar Wilde - Writer, taking a glass of champagne

"Let us cross the river and rest under the shade of the trees",
Stonewall Jackson

"Tete d'Armée [Chief of army]",
Napoleon I

"I shall hear in Heaven",
Ludwig van Beethoven