Micheline Trigaci Kay, 1944-2011
Extraordinary Journalist
Micheline Trigaci Kay, who transformed herself from journalist to student to professor, wanted to write her own obituary, but she got busy doing other things. We can almost see her now, striking out entire passages and editing with a sharp pen.
Matter-of-fact about her accomplishments, Michele was more comfortable celebrating others, delighting in her roles as wife, mother, daughter, sister and friend. Even when working on her memoir, she kept saying, "I don't want this to be all about me."
Michele cultivated and nurtured friendships from around the world. Her loving husband, Robert Schultz, her family and her dearest friends were always uppermost in her mind and heart.
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. She was well-traveled, fiercely independent and never shrank from a challenge. She met difficulties with courage, honesty, humor and the conviction that hard work never hurt anyone.
Told that she never did anything less than 100 percent, she said didn't see the point in doing it any other way.
As an assistant professor at St. Edward's University in her later years, she created the school's journalism degree program and re-made 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."
Born in Cairo, Egypt, on Dec. 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 remained fluent. She learned English at age 12 while living in London, thanks, she said, to the strict nuns in the Catholic school she attended. 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 diplomatic cables to the British government while the family lived in Cairo. That side job at Marconi Cable & Wireless caused him and his family to be placed under house arrest and ultimately exiled from Egypt on Michele's 12th birthday.
Michele's parents encouraged her independence, and being Michele, she took that encouragement and ran with it. Once, as a young teenager, she startled her family by deciding to hitchhike across India and Europe, embarking on this adventure on a whim while on a stopover on a flight from Hong Kong to London.
Michele started her journalism career in 1962 at 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. An editor once asked her if a story she had completed was written "in a language any of us speaks." 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 Keith Kay at age 20, 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 but with the firm belief each would find interesting work.
Keith was hired by CBS to cover the Vietnam War and Michele got a job with Pan American World Airways, making sure the GIs were being treated well and their logistical problems were solved. After the war ended, the couple lived in Paris, where Michele took a job with the American Chamber of Commerce. They also spent time in Tel Aviv. They had two children, Deborah and Warren.
In 1981, the family moved to Rockwall, just outside of Dallas, where Michele was an editor and columnist for the Dallas-Fort Worth Business Journal and later, senior editor of Texas Business Magazine. She once said of business reporting, "Business teaches you about how our world works. You learn how to cover what people are doing. You are a generalist, not a specialist … translating to the layman."
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 effort and time it took. She brought the same professionalism and work ethic to her jobs as a columnist and an editor.
In reflecting on the time she had devoted to her craft, she came to the conclusion that she knew of no other way to approach it, saying simply, "I thought the work was important."
While journalism defined her professional life, Michele also ventured into politics. She worked for U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in his 1988 campaign for attorney general of Texas and for Carole Keeton Strayhorn in 1999, when she was comptroller. Michele obtained her U.S. citizenship in 1997 so that she could have a direct say in the electoral process.
In her late 50s, in 2002, Michele fulfilled a life goal by obtaining a bachelor's degree, saying that she had always felt that "something was missing because there were things I didn't know." She had never been to college, but her intelligence, coupled with a program at St. Edward's University that credited her experience, enabled Michele to complete her coursework in about two years.
She loved school, and in 2005, she earned a master's degree from St. Ed's. She found a second professional love in teaching at the school. Many of her students kept in touch with her, and she cherished their support and friendship.
In the last year of her life, she worked closely with friends Mary Ann Roser and Catherine Rainwater on a memoir that stemmed from her master's thesis about displaced persons. It centered on her experience being deported from Egypt and the impact exile had on her life and that of her immediate family.
Michele spoke often and lovingly of her family: Her daughter Deborah Gilbert and her husband, Chuck, and her son, Warren, and his wife, Laura, and Michele's grandchildren, Keith, Brennan, Austin, Nate and Annabel.
She found love in her second marriage to Robert Schultz in January 1999, knowing soon after they met that he was "the one." He was her biggest cheerleader when she expressed a desire to go to college. She took pride in the accomplishments of Robert's children – Kenneth and his wife, Heidi, and Karl, and his wife, Liz.
Michele and Robert enjoyed traveling the world together, attending the symphony and spending time with friends. They enjoyed entertaining and were generous hosts.
The running theme of their loving banter was their appreciation of each other's different strengths. Robert said they were complementary opposites in nearly every way. He was endlessly entertained by the dichotomy of Michele's ability to be at home in the world, yet her impracticality when it came to everyday matters like flat tires. An engineer, he tried to help her with her math courses in college, but she insisted that math was impossible and that the homework problems were "stupid" and "not useful."
She appreciated his steadfast love all the more because of her less conventional life.
Robert was her constant caregiver when she was ill with a brain tumor, paying daily tribute to the marriage vow, "In sickness and in health…"
As for what she brought him, a poem on the blog he kept up during her illness expresses it beautifully. Robert wrote this when Michele's daughter, Deborah, asked everyone at Thanksgiving 2009 to write the five things for which they were thankful:
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Thanksgiving 2009
What am I thankful for?
Michele, Michele, Michele, Michele, Michele
I am thankful that she has broadened my horizons
and has shown me a world that I would have
never known without her.
I am thankful that she inspires me.
I am thankful to have her to love.
I am thankful to be loved by her.
I am thankful that she has changed my life.
Although life may not turn out exactly as hoped,
I will always be thankful for Michele.
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We are all thankful for Michele.
She gave a lot to her community and was active on various civic and professional boards. She was the first woman member of the century-old Town and Gown Club in Austin. She also was a member of the Open Forum Club, the Tuesday Club, the Writers' League of Texas and the Headliners Club. She was on the Nature Conservancy of Texas Advisory Council and on the board of directors for the Austin Playhouse.
In addition to those already mentioned, Michele is 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, and the Magid family of Kyneton, Victoria, Australia; She had too many friends to list.
In lieu of flowers, donations are suggested to Hospice Austin and the American Cancer Society.
Arrangements by Weed-Corley-Fish, 3125 North Lamar Blvd., are pending, as are services at The Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd.