My first encounter with Mike was in the 8th grade were John Arndt and I greeted Mike with a barrage of spitballs in Mr. Stroupe's geometry class.  Well that didn't last long as Mike proceeded to make his own spitball, paste it to his forehead and bring it to the instructors attention by saying look what Nic did Mr. Stroup. While John and I spent the rest of class in the hallway occasionally catching a glance of Mike chuckling to himself and looking like the dejected new kid whenever the teacher turned around we realized that this guy was better a friend than foe.  Thus a friendship was born that maintained itself throughout our lives. Through Hershey High and even when we all went our separate ways in college we still managed to get together for weekend trips to each others respective schools or just planning a joint venture skiing in the Poconos. This past February we had all just gotten together after a long dry spell of not getting together in theory we were to ski that weekend but it ended up being just a bunch of old friends catching up and telling stories of life experiences and showing pictures of our kids which was just as good a time. And as recently as of August 26 when Mike and Miriam attended my wedding.  I had told my new wife all the stories of Mike, Rob (Jefferies) Dan (Shovlin) Kevin (Olsavsky) and myself and now she had finally gotten to meet these legends from my past. Only to have Michael taken from us 16 days later. I was at that tragic scene, and although I didn't know it at the time so was Mike, but when I look back at that horrific experience I felt committed in what I was doing and can now attribute that to only one thing, it was Mike's presence there again doing what he did best looking out for one of his buddies. I'll miss you Mike and I know your watching us all.

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