Writers' League

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http://writersleagueoftexas.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/2110/

The Writers’ League of Texas

A Tribute to Michele Kay
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by Cyndi Hughes
WLT Executive Director

It’s with a heavy heart that we share the news that Michele Kay, a Writers’ League Board member in 2009, passed away on Feb. 15.

As I’ve been thinking about her this week, the two words that come to miind are “diminutive dynamo.” Michele may have been a tiny person physically, but her inquisitive mind and generous heart fit her big personality.

Michele and I went way back to our days at the Austin American-Statesman; she lasted longer there than my paltry three and a half years. At first, she could come off as brusque and intimidating, for Michele did not suffer fools. But once you got to know, you couldn’t help but admire her curiosity about life and the world and the warmth of her friendship and hospitality.

Not only was Michele a top-notch journalist, but she was also a true child of the world. She’d live in exotic places like Hong Kong and Paris and Egypt (she was born there), and her French mother and British father lived in England, and that gravelly voice with its vaguely British accent was unmistakable.

I’d seen her on and off for years. When we reconnected in 2008, I had just taken on my job with the Writers’ League, and Michele was just stepping down from her position at St. Edward’s University, where she revamped the student [click the red "Read More" button below to continue]newspaper. She was looking forward to retirement (I believe that was her second retirement!), spending time with her wonderful husband, Robert, working on her own writing projects, and doing volunteer work. Well, anyone who tells ME something like that is bound to be asked this question: Would you like to get involved in the Writers’ League? Luckily for us, Michele said, YES!

She threw herself into it with her typical dedication and enthusiasm, hosting our first Bookish Brunch during the 2008 Texas Book Festival at her spectacular home on Cat Mountain and then starting to work on fundraising and special events.

Unfortunately, in March 2009, Michele started having headaches that weren’t simply headaches. Around that time, she and I were planning to meet, and I received a call from her, saying, “I’m really sorry but I can’t be there. I have a brain tumor and I’m in the hospital. I don’t want to leave you in the lurch.” That was vintage Michele, calling me herself from her hospital bed and being concerned about the meeting than what she was facing.

Slowly, the tumor took its toll on that brilliant mind of hers. It tampered with her ability to talk sometimes and her short-term memory. Shortly after receiving her prognosis, she resigned from serving on the board to focus on her health. But even in the face of such a dire disease, she took it head on with a clarity and courage that is her gift to all of us.

I really regret that this disease appeared when it did, just when Michele was finally able to do all of those things she was wanting to do. Yet, that diminutive dynamo will always have a place in the heart of everyone who knew her.

Our board president, Louis Brusatti, was Michele’s boss at St. Ed’s and had this to say about Michele “During Michele’s three years at St. Edward’s University, she successfully moved the student newspaper (Hilltop Views) from Student Life into the School of Humanities, worked with the Communication and English Writing and Rhetoric Departments to establish an approved Journalism Minor, and brought a professionalism to the paper that it had not known. Hilltop Views is now a credible force on campus and has won numerous national awards. She was truly loved by both students and faculty, and will be missed.”

She will, indeed, be missed.

For more on Michele, please read the story in the American-Statesman. Services will be at 11 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 19, at the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd in Austin.

POSTSCRIPT: After all of my waxing about Michele’s being larger than life above, when I imported her picture, it came in REALLY large! That HAD to be Michele funning with me.

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Micheline Trigaci Kay

02 December 1944 --16 February 2011

Extraordinary Journalist

　

Micheline Trigaci Kay transformed herself from journalist to student to professor. Matter-of-fact about her accomplishments, Michele was more comfortable celebrating others, delighting in her roles as wife, mother, grandmother, daughter, sister and friend. Throughout her life, Michele placed the highest importance on family. She spoke of her family often and lovingly.

Michele cultivated and nurtured friendships from around the world. She maintained friendships forever and was in monthly contact with friends she made when she was a teenager through those she met in Austin. Family and friends were always uppermost in her mind. She adored her children and grandchildren and took enormous pleasure and pride in their adventures and successes.

She was a consummate storyteller whose professional life, while grounded in journalism, included stints in politics, business and community involvement. She was determined to shed some light in this world through her writing and teaching, and her work shone like a beacon. She was well traveled, fiercely independent and never shrank from a challenge. She met difficulties with courage, humor and a dedication to hard work. She never seemed to have had an ethical dilemma--she just always did whatever was right.

Told that she never did anything less than 100 percent, she said did not see the point in doing it any other way. In reflecting on the time she had devoted to journalism, she concluded that she knew no other way to approach it, saying simply, “I thought the work was important.”

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Born in Cairo, Egypt on December 2, 1944, Michele lived in London, Hong Kong, Saigon, San Francisco, Paris, Tel Aviv, New York, Dallas and Austin. Her first language was French and she learned English at age 12.

She became a British citizen by an act of Parliament at the request of the Queen – a favor in return for her father’s work diverting classified cables to the British government while the family lived in Cairo. Those espionage activities at the communications company he managed caused the entire family to be placed under house arrest and ultimately deported from Egypt on Michele’s 12th birthday.

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Michele first journalism position was with the Hong Kong Standard at age 17. She first covered weddings, which she described as a disaster, and later wrote news -- which, she said, at first, went only slightly better. She soon was good enough for a job at the bigger, more prestigious South China Morning Post as its first woman covering hard news

She married her Hong Kong sweetheart, Keith Kay, at age 20, after he was drafted into the Army and stationed in New Jersey. The couple lived in New York and Michele worked for the Pakistan Mission to the UN, Pfizer and a pharmaceutical magazine. When Keith’s Army stint was over, the couple moved to Saigon, without jobs and on borrowed money, but firmly believing they each would find something interesting to do.

Keith was hired by CBS to cover the Vietnam War, Michele got a job with Pan American World Airways, making sure the traveling GIs were being treated well and their logistical problems were solved. After the war ended, the couple lived in Hong Kong and Paris, where Michele took a job with the American Chamber of Commerce.

In 1981, the family moved to Rockwall, where Michele was an editor and columnist for the Dallas/Fort Worth Business Journal and later, senior editor of Texas Business Magazine.

When the Austin American-Statesman was looking for a business editor in 1988, Michele was ready. She moved to Austin and held various posts at the Statesman, including editorial writer, Washington correspondent and Texas Capitol reporter. She covered the intersection of politics and policy with flair and a dogged determination to be the first with the story and to perfect the telling of it, whatever time it took. She brought the same professionalism to her work as a columnist and an editor.

While journalism defined her professional life, Michele also had first hand experience in the world of politics. She was press secretary for U.S. Sen. John Cornyn during his 1998 campaign for attorney general. She also worked with Carole Keeton Strayhorn when she was comptroller. Michele obtained her U.S. citizenship in 1997 so that she could have a direct say in the electoral process.

Michele fulfilled a life goal in 2002 by obtaining her undergraduate degree. She had never been to college in her youth, but her hard work, intelligence, and lifetime experience enabled Michele to complete her coursework in two years. She loved school and in 2005, earned a master’s degree from St. Edward’s University.

In the past year, she worked closely with friends Mary Ann and Catherine on a memoir that expanded her master’s thesis about displaced persons. It centers on her experience of being deported from Egypt and the impact that had on her life and her family. We expect it to be published late this year.

She found a second professional love in teaching at St. Ed’s, where she set high expectations for her students and worked hard to help them meet her standards. Many of her students kept in touch with her, and she cherished their support and friendship.

As an assistant professor at St. Edward’s University for three years, she created the school’s journalism minor program and remade the student newspaper. “I wasn’t really a teacher,” Michele said of her love of interacting with the students. “I was somebody with a passion for something who wanted to share it with them.”

Michele is also survived by her brother, Jean Pierre Trigaci of Majorca, Spain; cousins Denyse Milton of Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.; the Ardith-Gilkman-Eteve family of Paris, France; the Magid family of Kyneton, Victoria, Australia.

Michele and I found love in a second marriage. We were complementary opposites in nearly every way--she the always sociable and affable very liberal liberal arts major and I the always shy conservative nerd engineer. But somehow it worked and I was never happier. Through much effort, Michele was able to mend my badly damaged relationships with my sons and we became a truly blended family. She took great pride in the accomplishments of my sons and their wives.

Michele often discussed her belief that everyone should strive to make the world a better place and leave behind a legacy of good deeds. I believe that she did that.

Michele was the most interesting woman I ever met.

I will always be thankful for Michele.

RKS

　

Food and Flowers

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Michele believed that a donation to a charity would be a much better way to express a remembrance than flowers.

Suggestions are:

Hospice Austin
4107 Spicewood Spring Road
Austin, Texas 78759

http://www.hospiceaustin.org/

http://www.hospiceaustin.org/site/pp.asp?c=bdJPITMyA&b=3644305

The American Cancer Society

http://www.cancer.org/

And while we know it is traditional to bring food to the house, and we appreciate the thought and generosity, we are already well stocked and don't need more.

Thanks,

RKS

Church Services

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Funeral Mass

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A funeral mass for Michele will be held at the

Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd

3201 Windsor Road Austin 78703

512 346 3523

at

11:00 am

on

Saturday 19 February 2011

Immediately following the service, there will be a reception in the parish hall.

RKS

Goodbye to you, Michele...

Michele passed away peacefully this morning at 8:44am.

Arrangements are pending and will be posted here this evening.

A New Phase

Comfort Mode

Thursday, 27 January 2011

We met with Dr Chadha, our oncologist twice this week. Once for a routine office visit, during which he explained that he has done everything he can to treat the cancer and now we will just have to let it run its course. It appears that there is probable cancer recurrence in both of the surgery sites. We are now in a comfort mode, during which we will simply try to make Michele as comfortable as possible. The second visit was for an emergency infusion of fluids because Michele was dehydrated. Yesterday she was unable to keep anything down--she regurgitated everything she ate or drank.

This week our psychologist, occupational therapist, speech therapist, and physical therapist all said that they could no longer do anything to improve her condition and saw no value in continuing their treatments.

Michele’s condition is rapidly deteriorating. Muscle control for her entire right side continues to be limited and her right arm is almost paralyzed. There seems to be no improvement of her partial amnesia. Michele is practically mute--she can only occasionally give one-word answers to questions. Even her once emphatic “NO!” is gone. At times, she seems to understand what is said to her, but often she only looks at the speaker with a blank stare. Phone conversations are impossible.

So, next week Michele will become a hospice patient, but we plan to keep her at home. For the dehydration treatment, we were considering an ambulance to the emergency room, but she made it quite clear that she did not want to go back to the hospital under any circumstances. Fortunately, we were able to go to Dr Chadha’s office for the infusion.

　

RKS

CSF Problems Resolved

CSF Problems Resolved

Wednesday 19 January 2011

We had a new MRI and then met with Kit Fox, our surgeon, this week. There seems to be a recurrence in the original cancer area, which we will let run its course. The cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) problem seems to have resolved itself, just as Dr Fox expected.

CSF surrounds the brain and the brain essentially floats in it. One of the side effects of the October surgery was that Michele’s brain was producing too much CSF. . In November, Dr Fox drilled a hole in her skull and inserted a catheter to drain the excess fluid. That obviously could not be a permanent solution, and with the infection and other complications and reasons, our only option was to let it work itself out and let the brain balance the production to its needs.

In achieving a balance, CSF built up in the space between her skull and her brain. This caused pressure on her brain and compressed and squeezed the brain. In one MRI, one side of her brain was compressed by 16 mm (5/8 inch.). The excess pressure caused the cavities (ventricles) in the center of her brain to nearly collapse, shifted the center line of the brain by 6mm (¼ inch ) and pushed Michele’s brain against her skull on the opposite side of her head. For the past two months, the area of excess CSF has not been stationary, but has moved to different parts of the brain. Besides giving her a terrific headache, it caused stroke-like effects. Some effects were transient, but others have been more persistent.

Michele has partial amnesia for some events since 1990 or 1995. She seems to remember most pre-1990 events and people. She remembered James, an editor at the university paper in 2008, and even identified him by his handwriting on a card, but isn’t too sure who I am. She remembered our wedding reception in detail including who attended, except for one detail: who she married. However, I am not too concerned, since she has proposed to me since we came home. At least I know the truthful answer to the age old question: If you could, would do it all over again and marry me?

Michele continues to have great difficulty speaking, but she seems to understand most things said to her. She generally gets frustrated when trying to socialize in a group of over three people. She likes to have visitors in the mornings between ten and noon and finds former students particularly enjoyable. She has limited endurance, so a half-hour visit is about right. By attempting to limit visitors to four a morning, she is usually booked several days in advance, so it is advisable to phone ahead.

She has some muscle control issues on her right side and very limited use of her right arm and especially her right hand. Mobility is a challenge and she uses a walker inside the house and always uses a wheelchair when going outside the house.

We have had a parade of therapists assisting in Michele’s recovery--as much as 10 hours a week. Progress has been slow, but measurable.

Throughout all of this, Michele has, as you would expect, remained remarkably positive and we are working through all of the issues with help from our friends.

RKS