Wednesday, December 27, 2023
From Dennis Lee: Michael's younger brother: A tribute and a few stories about Michael and myself; Memories, some his, some mine.
I first met Michael when he was seven years old on March 9th, 1945. I was a little smelly then and not much of a conversationalist. My first clear memory of Michael was at a party he was hosting for a bunch of guys and gals at our house, friends of his, in our backyard. At that time he was in high school and I was in junior high. I eventually walked into that party, and I think I was seeing more than I was supposed to, because it didn't take long before I was soon basically thrown out of the party. Although the girls seemed to like me. Maybe that was the problem.
Michael, at a young age, decided that he wanted to become a farmer, I guess. For a young Jewish boy growing up in a big city that was a very unusual pursuit. Maybe, it was because our father would plant tomato and pepper plants in our backyard every year and he caught the bug. Who knows! Anyway, he began his farming career by attending a special high school in the New York City school system dedicated to training future farmers. During the summer between his freshman and sophomore year in HS, he attended summer school there, which of course was totally dedicated to hands-on training for young potential farmers. One day he invited me to join him at the school farm. I stayed with him all day and had a great time. They even had some farm animals. For the following summers, the school found jobs for the students at real farms. Of course the students had no prior knowledge about the farms they were going to, the farmers, or the working conditions concerning the different farms they eventually would be assigned to. One summer my parents decided to visit Michael at his assigned farm. When we met with Michael there, he said that he did not like the farmer's food that they were feeding him or the farmer. He complained that the farm work was very hard for him and that the farmer was mean to him. And I thought that the farm looked particularly run down. And I'm guessing here that there was no farmer's daughter. This experience however did not deter Michael from continuing his pursuit of farming as he later went on to college to study as a farming major.
Farming was not to be, however, as Michael decided later on to head out west and try out newspaper work. Michael soon found full time work in the printing room of the Los Angeles Times. During that period, Michael soon discovered news photography. Michael then spent most of his free time roaming the streets of Los Angeles waiting for opportunities to take newsworthy pictures. He soon installed a special radio into his car that was tuned to the police and fire department radio bands. On the evening of January 13, 1962 comedian and much loved television star Ernie Kovacs died in a single car traffic accident in Los Angeles, California. Michael immediately heard the news of the crash on his radio and rushed to the scene. He was soon to arrive at the crash and was able to take a picture of poor Mr. Kovacs hanging out of his car and not saying much. Michael then raced with his film to the Times, where the picture he took was placed on the front page of the L.A. Times.
Later, when I had a car, I visited Michael at the Middletown, New York newspaper where he worked as a photographer and writer. At the time of my visit, the newspaper workers were on strike. Michael soon recruited me to wear a sign that read "On strike" that covered my back and front. I was to march up and down in front of his newspaper wearing that sign for about an hour. For some reason I was the only person who was there doing that. A photographer (I guess who was not on strike) came out and took my picture. The next day my picture was on the front page of his newspaper. Must have been a slow day. The picture of me wearing that sign was also posted inside the newspaper with a note that read "Who is this guy". Later on during my visit with Michael he took me to an old farm. Inside a rather old barn on that farm was a World War 2 training aircraft that the local chickens obviously enjoyed sitting on. By now, it is probably just a pile of rust and chicken manure, but Mike loved WWII aircraft. Side note to the reader: At that time the Middletown newspaper Michael worked for was a member of the Associated Press. But, I'll get to that later.
One day, early in the morning, at the Middletown paper, Michael was assigned to cover a certain music event happening at a local farm near a town called Woodstock. So he loaded up his film bag and headed out to the farm. He arrived at the farm in the morning while they were still setting up, soon he started taking pictures of the people arriving and the very talented and famous folk bands practicing. By late afternoon that same day, he decided to head back to the paper. Only the road out was impossibly blocked with cars so badly that he couldn't leave. By that time the crowd heading there was immense and the traffic situation was getting worse. You see, News of the whole event was now being broadcast around the world. Michael then called his editor about what was going on there and that he couldn't get out of there to deliver his pictures to the paper. Now here's the backstory as I understand it. There exists a news gathering organization called the Associated Press (known as the "AP"). The AP covers the entire world collecting news and photos. The AP makes available the news and photos it assembles every day to every newspaper in the world that subscribes (for a fee) to the AP organization. In turn, every newspaper that belongs to the AP organization sends all the news and photos it creates to the AP. Those stories and photos can then be used by any newspaper that is a member of the AP for free. Here's the catch, no bylines, no credits to the creators of the stories or the photographers who take the pictures.
So to continue this story, Michael's editor says to Michael on the phone "No problem, considering what is going on there in Woodstock right now the AP will send a helicopter to you to pick up your film. Stay with the story". So every day Michael is taking pictures and giving them to the AP helicopter crew when it arrives. I don't know how Michael survived those four days in Woodstock, through the rain, the mud, the lack of decent food, poor sanitation and no sleeping accommodations, but he did.
Every picture of what was happening at the Woodstock music festival for four days that summer and what was subsequently appearing in every newspaper and television station around the world during those four days was taken by my brother Michael, because everyone else's pictures remained at Woodstock. When Michael got back to the office and inquired about "his negatives" they told him that they didn't have any of the negatives of the film he shot and that they didn't know where the negatives were. Those pictures were shown world wide, and now the negatives had totally gone "missing", because now they belonged to the Associated Press.
I remember I visited Michael in Sumter one time with our father, along with Matthew. Michael decided that the four of us should charter a boat so we could all go fishing off the coast together. Michael then explained to us that he knew of this hard to catch, rare fish, which Michael had caught on several occasions which was unknown to be in the local waters, until he proved its existence in local waters to the people who managed the local fish population. Once we were on the boat, before we could begin fishing for these special fish, Michael explained that first we had to catch a special bait. A certain type of jellyfish. These jellyfish floated around just below the surface and this type of jellyfish was not dangerous to touch, so you could pick them up out of the water with your bare hands. But first you had to find them of course, which took a while but was a lot of fun. That was a great fishing trip we had together and we even caught one or two of those elusive fish, which Michael took home and ate.
In more senior years as Michael and I grew older, we enjoyed talking on the phone about what we were doing. We always had lots to talk about. We often talked about his hunting trips with Matthew and what he was doing on the farm where he worked. We both were growing all kinds of vegetables and fruits in our backyards so we talked about what we used on them to make them grow better, and our successes and failures growing things. I got to know Michael better as we never spent much time together before we started getting older. It makes me happy to know that Michael lived a fulfilling and honorable life doing very interesting things and having lots of fun doing them. And he never got arrested. At least not that I know of.
Rest in peace Michael I will miss you.
