Tom Kirvan
Legal News, Editor-in-Chief
I could go on and on about Mike Smith. Hours actually. But that would not be good.
Mike, a cherished friend who died last Friday after a relatively short but particularly painful battle with pancreatic cancer, wasn’t one to belabor a point and had little tolerance for those who did. That was just one of his many virtues.
One of his others was that he was whip-smart. I learned that early on in our friendship when someone challenged him on a point of history. Let's just say it did not go well for the other fellow. As the expression goes, it was like taking a knife to a gun fight.
Of course, it would have been even more of a bloodletting if the self-described know-it-all had taken on Mike over a point of English grammar.
Or how to build a cross country or track team, and how to make everyone – from the star runner to the slowest runner – feel at the heart of the squad’s eventual success.
He was that kind of guy. A true prince of a fellow. A Hall of Fame coach and a Hall of Fame friend, husband, father, and grandfather.
He also was a man of few words—all well-chosen.
Particularly after one Michigan-Michigan State football game that we attended at the Big House several years ago. It had all the makings of a banner Maize and Blue day until something ghastly happened in the waning seconds – a botched punt, a lucky bounce, a green-and-white parade to the goal line right in front of our shell-shocked eyes.
All of a sudden, Mike and I were speechless – except for one word.
The F-bomb. It seemed like the only appropriate thing to say. And say it we did. Repeatedly, as we dragged ourselves out of Michigan Stadium.
Cursing, on occasion, can be good for the soul, even for a man of letters, who taught English and history for more than 30 years before retiring from the classroom.
We first crossed paths back in the early ‘80s when a young cross country coach and a fledgling newspaperman were starting journeys along their respective career paths.
I remember well going out to take the team pictures one of those early years in his coaching reign. It didn’t take long to complete the photo assignment. There were just a handful of girls on the squad that season.
On the boys’ side, a few more turned out. I could write their names in BIG PRINT on a 3 by 5 index card.
A few years later, it was a much different story. I needed a wide-angle lens to capture the images. I also needed a trusted assistant to write down all the names.
Wow, I thought.
This “Mike Smith fellow” is a builder, a developer, an architect in every sense of the words.
Before long, we became good friends, sharing a love of running, U-M basketball, and downhill skiing. In fact, a decade or so ago, on a ski trip to Utah, we became especially close friends when we were stranded on a chair lift for more than an hour, clinging for our lives in 70 mph winds during a blinding snowstorm. That is when I discovered that this man had guts; this man had stamina; this man had a special something about him.
That strength, courage, and love of life were in full view over the past two weeks when he and his beloved wife Mary made a cross country trip to Eugene, Ore. to see a “bucket list” item – the U.S. Olympic Trials for track and field athletes.
It turned out to be a trip of a lifetime, a trip where those of us who loved and admired him hoped that he could muster one last miraculous kick down the home stretch to pull out a victory over a particularly nasty foe called cancer.
Alas, it was not to be.
But, in metaphorical terms, he had already run the ultimate “good race” in life, the kind to be treasured and long remembered.
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