On line, death notices live on. At some sites, even dogs are in the obit details...

By Cathy Lynn Grossman
Thur., Sept. 23, 1999
FINAL EDITION Section: LIFE Page 10D

The late Frank Bartol, a Slovenian immigrant carpenter and egg farmer in an obscure northern Michigan village, gets hundreds of visitors a week these days. They're not standing by a gravestone. They're paying their respects at a Bartol memorial lodged in cyberspace eternity. He's the sample obituary for ObitDetails.com (www.obit details.com), the newest Web site to let mourners post the poetry of an ordinary life. Here's where far-flung family, friends and curious strangers learn that ''customers were often heard to remark that F.H. Bartol Poultry Farm eggs were the best they'd ever tasted.''

ObitDetails founder and CEO Stopher Bartol, Frank's grandson, has more than 200 funeral homes nationwide offering mourners the $145 on-line obit to supplement the traditional newspaper death notice. Mourners who call up the site can post a memorial for the same price, after ''we verify that the person really is dead.'' The fee covers a 1,000-word obituary, which the ObitDetails staff will edit or even write if requested, and a photo. It's $65 for the next 1,000 words and $25 per additional photo. Bartol, ''a management consultant in my past life,'' pledges part of the fee goes to an endowment to maintain the memorials on line even if the ObitDetails company fails.

The site links to directions to funeral homes, details for services, phone numbers for florists and the favored charities of the deceased. ''As cremations increase, many people are looking for something beyond a funeral service for a way to tell a compelling, detailed, rich life story,'' says Bartol, who launched the site in November and now posts 10 obituaries a day. ''We had one from Chicago that has had 500 visitors. Phyllis Anderson's family did a beautiful job communicating to people,'' he says. Anderson, who died in March at age 57, has a dignified standard obituary describing her career as a Realtor and a community volunteer in Hinsdale, Ill. It's in the additional memorials that she is revealed as a gourmet cook, an indefatigable antiquer, a lover of travel and, most of all, as the loving center of a wide circle of family and friends.

One memorial is a school essay written last year by grandson Christopher, then 9, while Anderson was undergoing cancer treatment. Nominating her for ''Relative of the Year,'' he writes, in part: ''My Grams is so extremely kind and loving it's not even funny!! She fixes me the most delicious and healthiest food that I love!! The number one reason is that she's SO NICE, even-though she's sick and tired most of the time she'll do anything to please me and make me happy!''

In the obituary for Richard F. Gallagher, a Chicago personal injury lawyer who died in August at age 72, his son Matthew shares this: ''For my Dad, the most satisfying thing was helping some working guy get his life back on track.''

Other sites offering on-line memorials include www.celebratealife.com, which is addressed not only to mourners but to anyone who wishes to create a personal biography that might ''provide a deep insight into how you want to be remembered'' for $995 to $2,295 or more, and www.plan4 ever.com, where visitors can do complete funeral planning. Mourning a pet? Try www.dogheaven.com, www.in-memory-of-pets.com or www .mycemetery.com/my/pet.html.