Roger Giroux wants to assure everyone that, while he is still retiring as superintendent of Anoka-Hennepin schools, it's not because he's dead.

Giroux, 62, went through a little scare last week when the Huffington Post news website reported that he had died. Actually, the deceased in question was publishing icon Robert Giroux, who had died at the age of 94. But the Post threw up a photo of the Anoka-Hennepin schools chief instead. District officials say the story on the Post website was correct, but the headline read "Roger Giroux, Publishing Giant, Dies."

"Being alive is a great relief," said a chipper Giroux on Friday. "Being a publishing giant ... I would never in my wildest Walter Mitty moments have imagined doing that."

Giroux, who will retire at the end of the year after 13 years as superintendent, said he found out about the online post while playing in a golf tournament last Saturday.

"Then, I called my wife to assure her I wasn't dead," Giroux said. E-mails went out to the Huffington Post, which eventually corrected the headline and photo.

Meanwhile, e-mails were coming in from colleagues, and phone calls from relatives. Most knew the post was in error. But just to make sure all the relatives were in the pipeline, Giroux put in a call to his sister-in-law, Dorothy, in Chicago.

"I said, 'Dorothy, take a look,' and there it was. She was laughing for five minutes.'"

Giroux told board members of the error at their Monday meeting and had to take some good-natured ribbing. He said he is not, to his knowledge, related to Robert Giroux.

Efforts to reach the Huffington Post were unsuccessful.

By the time a reporter called him Friday, Giroux said he and the school board were ready to put this whole dead thing behind them.

"I have moved on, if you must know," he said. "Being alive and still employed, they prefer that I not have fun with this forever."

Norman Draper • 612-673-4547