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http://www.statesman.com/news/local/michele-kay-journalist-and-professor-dies-1258651.html
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Michele Kay, journalist and professor, dies
Her four-decade career in journalism included stints at the Austin American-Statesman.
By Chuck Lindell
Updated: 2:38 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 16, 2011
Diminutive only in size, Michele Kay was an international journalist who settled into Austin and the pages of this newspaper with a no-nonsense intensity that couldn't hide a soft heart underneath.
Kay — who died Wednesday morning, almost two years after being diagnosed with a brain tumor — cut a wide path through Austin as the American-Statesman's business editor from 1988-91, followed by stints as an editorial writer, Washington correspondent, state Capitol reporter and business columnist.
Never afraid to reinvent herself, Kay, 66, also dipped a toe into politics, earned the college degrees she always craved and found fulfillment as a journalism professor.
"She was a good reporter — tough as nails, without fear or favor," said Austin political consultant Bill Miller, who met Kay when she was a Dallas business reporter in the 1980s. "She just didn't put up with BS. She played you straight; she demanded that you play her straight."
Kay thought fast, wrote fast and spoke very fast. She disliked distractions, could be brusque and refused to suffer fools.
She also made friends easily, shifting into a slower gear for the personal conversations she loved — filing away facts about birthdays, weddings, births and other life landmarks that she could recall years later.
"She knew so much more about the world than the average person on the street, or average reporter for that matter," said Bruce Todd, a former Austin mayor and longtime friend. "You always felt that her story, whether it was in your favor or against, was the correct story."
Lunch with Kay was a series of interruptions as friends, sources and public officials stopped by the restaurant table to say hello. Her list of contacts made Kay a formidable and dependable journalist, said Debra Davis, Kay's former editor and a longtime friend.
"She always knew what was going to happen before it was going to happen, and it was because she kept up with dozens, hundreds of people in town," said Davis, the Statesman's state editor. "It wasn't a calculated sort of thing. She was really interested in people's lives."
Kay was a 5-foot-tall fireball who hitchhiked across India and Europe as a teenager and, as a 17-year-old in 1962, embarked on a four-decade journalism career as a reporter for the Hong Kong Standard.
That same determination appeared again when the sudden onset of severe headaches revealed a left temporal lobe brain tumor in March 2009. Kay was in surgery a week later, followed by a trying course of radiation and chemotherapy. Additional surgeries followed.
Many days were good, others were not as Kay dealt with the fast-growing, aggressive cancer and the slow deterioration of her body.
The past few months of illness increasingly deprived Kay of the ability to talk, so she focused on her greatest joys: visits with friends and time with her husband, Robert Schultz, her two children and five grandchildren.
"She handled her illness like she handled her life — very determined, very independent," said Mary Ann Roser, a Statesman reporter and friend.
Kay died at home around 8 a.m. today, Roser said.
Kay was born in 1944 in Egypt to a French mother and Maltese father, but her family was abruptly exiled in 1956 while Egypt battled Britain, France and Israel over the Suez Canal. Parliament later made Kay a British subject in thanks for her father's work diverting classified diplomatic cables to London while he worked for a cable company in Cairo.
War played another influential role in Kay's life when she and then-husband Keith Kay moved to Saigon in 1967 in search of jobs. He became a prominent CBS cameraman, and Michele Kay worked for Pan American World Airways, helping U.S. servicemen on rest-and-relaxation travel during the Vietnam War.
"Her time in Vietnam left her with kind of a war-correspondent mentality," Miller said.
Kay was an "eternally curious," high-energy workaholic, said Carrie Rosenthal, whose friendship with Kay began in Hong Kong in 1970. Even then, Kay had a wide circle of friends and delighted in uniting strangers as something of a friendship matchmaker, a pattern she continued in Austin.
"She has really lived a very, very full life," Rosenthal said. "It was still way too early to go, but she lived life to the fullest. She didn't waste time."
After taking magazine jobs in Hong Kong and Paris, Kay arrived in Texas in 1981 to become editor of the Dallas/Fort Worth Business Journal and, later, the now-defunct Texas Business Magazine. She moved to Austin in 1988 and became a U.S. citizen in 1997.
Kay left the Statesman in the late 1990s for a brief turn at politics, working as press secretary for John Cornyn's successful campaign for Texas attorney general and for then-Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn.
Kay returned to the Statesman as a reporter and business columnist, then departed in 2003 for a new challenge: a liberal arts master's degree from St. Edward's University, where she had earned a bachelor's degree a year earlier.
The degrees opened the door for Kay's final career as assistant journalism professor and school newspaper adviser at St. Edward's.
She was a tough but fair teacher, enthusiastic in the classroom and approachable outside of it, said Jeffrey Benzing, who took reporting and editing classes from Kay in 2006-07.
"If you needed something, she'd be right there, and she'd put in extra time and extra hours," Benzing said. "If you needed a recommendation or reference, she was always there before you could ask."
In her last business column in the Statesman, printed July 22, 2001, Kay reflected on the culture shock of moving from Paris to the "inhospitable heat and suburban sprawl of Dallas," only to be won over by this state's ever-present optimism, confidence and deep sense of community.
"If there is one thing Texas has taught me, it is this: Life is a series of opportunities that shape the future," she wrote. "If you recognize them and grab them, you can reshape your life."
Services will be 11 a.m. Saturday at Good Shepherd Episcopal Church, 3201 Windsor Road, with a reception to follow at noon.
clindell@statesman.com, 912-2569
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