Nicole

IN THE LOVING MEMORY OF DANNEL LITES 1953-2002

An old fandom space person who passed away back in 2002.

Now, I didn't read her work. I was going to read her Sea and Sky series (and credits to her old internet friend 'rith, who still writes!), and I'm still supposed to, but you see, it's on a queue.

Now, the reason I'm mentioning her here may seem a bit absurd, and it is. I found out about an old fanfic archive website made for DC fangirls back in 2004, named OFFPANEL.NET. Found it while I was looking for Daredevil/Nightwing content lol, judge me.

The earliest work on AO3 was from 2003, and it was a photo. Sadly, the photo was unavailable, but there were some clickable links on the work. I started clicking them without reading a single word, and they led me to offpanel.net (ao3 version), which had been archived on AO3 through the Open Doors project.

Now, offpanel (og version) obviously caught my interest. Why wouldn't it? Learning that people like me existed back in the '90s and 2000s and were serious about their shit? Hell, sure.

But early on in my wandering, I came across the Sea and Sky section, which began with a note that went like this:

"Dannell passed away on September 16, 2002. Without her encouragement, none of the fiction on these pages would ever have been written. It is my honor to maintain an archive of her work, as she presented it."

Dunno why, but it caught my interest. How do you even keep track of an online friend's death? Suicide? Probs, I thought. But man, was I wrong.

It was an untimely, lonely death. And that's why her case was a bit messy.

I went through LiveJournals, memorials, and a person's page who claimed to be Dannell Lites's cousin! And she was an internet fandom person just like her cousin! Sadly, they only learned about her existence after her death, and that was also thanks to one of Dannell's coworkers.

The coworker did a great job in this case, by the way. Kudos to them!

Back to the cousin: I found their page quite late in my research. I remember it being one of the last websites I came across. It was a memorial page for Dannell that also explained the cousin's journey of learning about her, trying to archive her work, and attempting to get hold of her possessions by proving that they were genuinely related to her, so that her belongings wouldn't end up in the trash.

The things they wrote about what happened during this process matched the LiveJournal entries I'd read earlier, so it felt a bit eerie to read. It was like learning about her death firsthand.

I also came across a site called Find a Grave, which I'd never heard of before. It seemed like the cousin had lost a baby a few years before these events and had a memorial for them there, too. Little did I know that I'd come across this website again later on.

Yes, Dannell Lites has a gravestone listed there.

At first, the whole "finding out about her death" story seemed a bit too perfect to me, so I was suspicious about whether Dannell's death was real. Sorry.

But there was also an entry made by Darkmark, another old friend of Dannell's, posted right after the confirmation post about her death . It was titled "The Mystery of Dannell Lites," and yeah, she had lied about some things in her life. And don't get me wrong, but she was middle-aged, so the possibility of a fake death didn't seem entirely impossible.

But this gravestone was also added by a random person back in 2006, four years after Dannell's death. And the attached photo of her gravestone also showed her internet persona's chibi engraved on it, so we know it's our Dannell!

Also, just so you know, people willingly add the gravestones of people they don't know to that website because it can be helpful for some people (e.g., someone looking for a missing relative).

So what I mean to say is, yeah, the gravestone entry seems genuine.

And now comes the shocking part.

While I was investigating Dannell's memorial on that site and reading a newspaper article written about her death (which was also mentioned in Dannell's cousin's story!), I found out about a section called "Flowers."

I thought about leaving one (I probably will in the future), but holy shit. THE LAST FLOWER ENTRY.

AND IT WAS POSTED BACK IN 2017, 15 YEARS AFTER DANNELL'S DEATH.

SO YEAH, IT SEEMS GENUINE, BECAUSE WHY WOULD ANYONE BE HERE TRYING TO CAUSE A SCENE 15 YEARS AFTER HER DEATH???

The flower was left by Linnie Morgan, who wrote:

"My Long Lost Cousin, This is not the way I wanted to find you. Your biological family has been looking for you for many years. You have 2 younger sisters that have never stopped loving and looking for you and 2 brothers. Many other cousins, aunts & uncles that have looked for you. May you Rest In Peace and meet your family in Heaven."

And when I checked her profile and bio, she seemed genuine. It stated that she had started working on her family tree in 2003 in honor of her grandmother and great-grandmother.

And this is where my hours-long (about six hours on the computer) research ended. It seemed genuine, and it was a big shock for me. It made me feel many things, too.

Because think about it: Dannell's old friends probably don't know about any of this. Her gravestone memorial on Find a Grave, which was added years after her death, or what a family mystery she turned out to be, something that was only discovered many years after she passed away.

And also, a day later, I noticed another detail that convinced me even more of the possibility that the "long-lost cousin" story was real.

Linnie Morgan's late grandmother's full name is Florence J. Soelter Marshall, and her great-grandmother's name is Bernetta Abbie Semans Soelter.

Dannell's memorial page says her name is Dannell Danella Frances Soelter Lites but now that I think about it, it might have been Linnie Morgan who added that name to Dannell's memorial, since such a full name doesn't appear in the photo of her gravestone.

The Soelter name appears in all three names, but just like I said, I only just noticed that it's possible the full name might have been added by Mrs. Morgan later on.

Whatever.

But while I was writing this huge paragraph, I noticed something else. Before, when I saw the "Sponsored" mark on Linnie Morgan's flower entry, I thought her profile was the one that had been sponsored. I didn't give it much thought. I just assumed, "Maybe she was given that badge because she does a lot of community work on Find a Grave."

But no. I just noticed that the badge on her flower entry meant that she had sponsored Dannell's memorial!

Yep, I think she was genuine. Kudos to Mrs. Morgan, too! It says that sponsored memorials last forever!

It feels weird to learn about all this.

Dannell might have had a huge online presence in her space, but as much as it hurts to put it this way (because it feels like an ugly way to word it), she had no one around her whom she could call family IRL.

But she mattered. She had a huge community.

May you be happy wherever you are right now.

REST IN PEACE, DANNELL LITES.