Michael Kay:
CLASS OF 1960
George Washington High SchoolClass of 1960
San francisco, CA
University of Missouri - Graduate SchoolClass of 1978
Columbia, MO
University of CaliforniaClass of 1965
Berkeley, CA
Presidio Middle SchoolClass of 1957
San francisco, CA
Cabrillo Elementary SchoolClass of 1954
San francisco, CA
Michael's Story
Life
At 70, i am enjoying being an elder (From Age-ing to Sageing by Zalman Schacter is the model for my two groups). Aug 7, 2003 was my last lecture teaching Analytical Chemistry Summers at Portland State Univ. My students from all my years of teaching are part of my legacy. On 12/31/07 I closed my one-man-plus subcontractors consulting company, AMBRY, Inc. I volunteer with Eastside Jewish Community of Portland and until 2011 Chaired the Cemetery Committee for the Eastside Jewish Cemetery which I helped establish in 2003. I was chief-cook-and-bottle-washer from 2000 throuhg 2011.
After GW, I went to Berkeley, married in 1963 (Judith Greenbach GWHS '61), graduated in '65 and went to Grad School in Chemistry at MIT. Two children, Andrew 1967 and Daniel 1969. Doctor of Science '70 and moved to Columbia, MO at U of MO Research Reactor as Senior Radiochemist. Divorced '74. Remarried '76 (Rachel Foley Moag). Moved to Kennewick, WA '78 to work in Environmental Protection Unit at Hanford--I naively thought they hired me to do my job! Moved to Portland, OR '80 as Assoc Prof and Director of the Reed College Nuclear Reactor. In '86 went to the business world as Manager of Chemical Research and Production for Hanna Car Wash International. That ended in '88 when Dan Hanna overextended himself and went bankrupt. Then into the consulting world as Senior Environmental Scientist with DESCO Industrial Group, Environmental Division until '95 when the head of DESCO decided to shut the division down. I took weekly classes and passed a national exam to become a Certified Hazardous Materials Manager in '91. Since then I have been an itinerant professor and independent consultant. Divorced in '97.
I have been a consultant forensic scientist since 1971 on environmental and criminal cases. I am Dr. Shirov in Phil Margolin's mystery "After Dark". I also analyzed evidence and testified for him in an attempted murder case.
Remarried on 2/18/2001 to Sabina Smith who (rightly) claims she is the woman I have been looking for all my life. Life now is the way I want to live it. We enjoy traveling: Ireland (roots trip for both of us--found where my great grandfather lived in Dublin, and Sabina lit a candle for her great grandmother in the church she went to in County Mayo) and Italy in 2005, fly fishing in Alaska 2008, and a week exploring the Hells Canyon Area of eastern Oregon in 2012. We now spend about one-third of our time at Newport, on the central coast of Oregon, where we have a prefab home in Pacific Homes Beach Club with an over 55 community. It is on top of a high hill; well out of the tsunami zone.
Around 2005 I had two encounters with large numbers of butterflies (one walking into a swallowtail migration path along a trail I was hiking, and the other at the Butterfly Room in the Seattle Science Center (double-door entry to the butterfly equivalent of an aviary with many individuals of many species flying about). Thinking and meditating about these experiences, I drew this lesson for me: Once the butterfly leaves the chrysalis, it doesn't need anything it needed as a caterpiller. Out with over 150 pounds of "caterpiller" papers; i gave a part them to a friend who was a new chemistry instructor at Portland Community College. She was happy to receive my lecture notes, original problems, and exams that helped me maintain a 4.5 out of 5 rating by my students over my 13-years teaching analytical chemistry as an adjunct prof summers at Portland State Univ. i did keep a couple of books that I need to continue to be a "Mad Scientist". I've been an expert on that site answering questions from students around the world on general, analytical and radiochemistry, and low energy nuclear physics.
My hobbies are writing poetry (in final editing for a chap book I want to publish), birding (I volunteer as a breeding bird surveyor for a Breeding Bird Atlas Project and for ...Expand for more
a National Wildlife Refuge in the area), photography, gardening, and leather work. I enjoy cooking, and Sabina and I share that task. She is a creative paper-artist, and also an avid birder, camper, and fly fisherwoman. We both enjoy theater.
One of my "giving back" activities is judging local, regional, state, and international science fairs. I also volunteer to mentor any students who ask for my assistance in my areas of expertise. I recuse myself from judging those projects.For 30 years I have been a Science Fair Judge (local high school, regional, state, and in 2004, 2009, and 2010 co-chair of Environmental Science at the Intel-International Science and Engineering Fair).
In 1997 i became a "mail-order" minister (Universal Life Church)! Yep, the Rev. Michael Kay. I am a resource for my community by providing a service since I will perform mixed marriages (am officially registered with State of Oregon), and have also officiated at funerals and memorial services. I enjoy using my writing skills to write ceremony. My latest is a Vietnamese/Chinese(bride)--Jewish (groom) Ceremony. During the past year, I have performed two family and two friends weddings.
Now, I also spend time doing Aqua Aerobics as therapy for an artificial hip (8/2004). That has restrictions on, but doesn't stop, my outdoor activities (birding, photography, camping, fly fishing).
I was discussing with my Ortho Doc what type of hip I would receive, because I wanted to continue my activities. We decided that the large titanium ball/polyethylene lined socket would be the best because of the large surface area. I wasn't sure about that because the mean-time-to-failure was about 10 years (and I hope I have more than that!). The doctor said that new sockets were made with polyethylene that had been irradiated with a few rads of gamma rays to make it more resistant to wear. i saiid, "You mean mega rads?" He replied,"For the first time in my life I can truly say I am the doctor, and you are the nuclear scientist!" I had spent a couple of years in the middle 70's irradiating polyethylene blocks in the U of MO Research Cobalt-60 source to see if it was possible to increase strength without damaging other properties. Now, a piece of that research is in my hip joint.
Also, at the U of MO Reactor, we irradiated kilos of low quality cut and polished diamonds (sealed in cans) in the core of the reactor. After two days out of the reactor, there is no residual radiation emitted--but now these lower quality gems are colored in the yellow to green range. When Sabina and I were designing our wedding rings with a jeweler, he showed us some stones for my ring (Sabina had her mother's diamond and a beautiful opal I got her from Australia), one was a small green diamond. "You have to have that one!" she said, "You could have colored it." Since we made thousands of colored stones, there was a high probability that was true-and appropriate for a nuclear scientist.
With all the jobs and "projects" I have been involved with during the past 50+ years since GWHS, I have had a fabulous, exciting ride. Personally rewarding with pieces of my legacy scattered to the corners of the world. My first analysis I did after grad school was two water samples for WHO (World Health Org. of the UN). I found 0.5 parts-per-million of arsenic in the two samples. Another group confirmed my work. We had solved a mystery for a small village in the Chilean desert: water to mother, to milk, to baby, to grave. The mystery of the epidemic of neo-natal deaths was solved. WHO geologists found a water supply a couple of miles away that didn't flow through rocks containing naturally occurring arsenic, and built a pipeline to the village.
Antipodes
Gales rip fall down
Stark silhouettes emerge
Squirrels cache acorns
Trees erupt with life
Stark silhouettes disappear
Bird songs welcome spring
Copyright Michael Kay
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