Michael Pollet died yesterday. He suffered more inflictions than Job but bore up uncomplainingly. He died in a small Pittsfield, Massachusetts hospital. The Covid plague prevented his family and friends from being with him or even talking with him.
Our late friend Bill Schaap brought me into the poker game which Michael played in weekly for decades. He was pretty good at it which was admirable considering the competition which included George Rosenfeld, Alan Levine, Oscar Chase, and Mel Wulf
These were some really good players, some of them stern and serious when the game was going on. This didn’t stop me and Michael from kibitzing and joking, which drew frowns and sometimes adverse comments.
So we took our rapport outside of the game and met frequently for lunch uptown and downtown. We played a lot of golf together, both in upstate New York and In the winter at Ponte Verde near Jacksonville, Florida.
One winter week we played with two young friends, my nephew Ben and his friend Anand, civil rights lawyers from Chicago. Michael was athletic but by that time with the years having gone by he wasn’t what he used to be. He hit a slice to the right. The ball trickled down a bank near the lagoon. Michael walked down the slope to hit it, took a swing at the ball, lost his balance, and tumbled in. He sat there in the water, dapperly dressed as always, soaked but laughing. Ben and Anand took him by both arms and pulled him out. He finished the round.
Michael was a fine lawyer, strategic, ethical, and extremely competent. He was vigorous in his support of democratic rights starting off as a young man defending draft resistors. He developed an expertise in publishing law and was counsel to Consumer Reports, defending the magazine against liable suits brought by offended corporations whose products they believed had been maligned
Michael was above all kind, gentle, and mannerly. The vulgarity of our current times and its representative in the White House offended him to his core. “How could somebody be like that”, he asked me dismayed as he was by the turn things had taken.
He was well educated in the liberal arts. Michael majored in English literature at Bowdin college and continued his education by reading voraciously, keeping current with new publications, always recommending and summarizing books upon my request.
Michael was a lovely man and a good friend. Covid kept us apart for the last year. When last I saw him it was on a zoom call which Sybil had arranged. She organized another one but Michael was too sick and it had to be canceled.
Now I’ll have to be content with his memory. It is a sustaining one.