Mike Malone was first and foremost a writer. He knew the story of the Book of Kells and Padraic Colum's poem:

First, make a letter like a monument-- An upright like the fast-held hewn stone Immovable...Then, on a page made golden as the crown Of sainted man, a scripture you enscroll, Blackly, firmly, with the quickened skill Lessoned by famous masters of our school.

When he visited Trinity College in Dublin, Mike saw these famous pages and he must have felt very much at home with those Irish monks, who wrote, as one chronicler put it "with pens guided by angels."

Before we search out the mainsprings of his scholarly craftsmanship, let us take a stroll with Mike. He walked with a bit of a roll--rather like a sailor newly landed or a miner no longer constrained by low ceilings. He would hum a line or spin off a phrase or two from a song which fit the moment. He loved to talk shop, whether it was history or the grizzly bear in the airport lobby. You soon noticed that the banter edged in one direction or another--it opened a window just a bit--you could guess that he was thinking of this or that subject. A remark or phrase might quickly lead to a new topic--Artie Shaw's third clarinet player or the color of the gown worn by the lady in San Francisco when she was with Warren G. Harding. Mike was a volcano of fresh surprises and he never failed to surprise and delight you with something you never dreamed of.

In more serious conversation it was Mike's wonderful practice to listen attentively--sometimes he wore an almost quizzical look as if he were helping you get those gray cells all lined up so that your next sentence would make sense--ask a question or two, and then to offer no immediate program of his own. He took in your views, restrained his own, and added the data to his own mix. It was as if we were instructing him and were gratified by his receipt of what he apparently thought of as wise counsel. Once determined upon a course of action he seldom looked back. He was never plagued by doubts; he never second guessed his judgment. Occasionally he would query you, but mostly that was to make you certain that he knew your views, your reservations and that if he had not accepted them, he respected the source.

Also you and I noticed something refreshing: he possessed an open mind. Ideology was foreign to his nature. You can scan his writings in vain for ideological content--it was simply not in him. And most remarkably, he held no irony. It may be that in the long run that this bloody century of ours will be reviled as the hundred years of ironic detachment and cynicism. The moral relativism which underpins irony was alien to his soul. It might be argued that this trait was as American as his hometown of Pomeroy, Washington.

Mike grew up in this agricultural community, very near where Lewis and Clark trekked on their way to the Pacific. He worked for the Jolly Green Giant in those steep and hilly pea fields and loved, as kids did, to play practical jokes on his fellows with the super-cold anhydrous ammonia used as fertilizer. A frozen tennis shoe or tool brought howls of laughter. Just up the road was Spokane and he knew of the wise words uttered by the Indian leader of that name. Northwest tribes had more often than not welcomed theologians and the Jesuits had long established a presence in the rail and retail center of Spokane.

Gonzaga offered Mike a full buffet of ideas and approaches to a life of the mind. The imprint of Jesuit theology became palpable when you searched it out. He was, of all things, a disciplined Irishman. Those military-like instructions of Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus, formed the core of Mike Malone's work and character. Organization, precision, efficiency and calm shine forth as visible hallmarks of that training. He bore that imprint for the rest of his life. Everyone to whom I have talked about Mike has the identical impression: compulsive neatness. You never saw him with a desk full of clutter--you never saw him ruffled, hurried, disorganized. He could turn in an instant from one topic to another, and return as quickly to the middle of the sentence on which he was working one when you interrupted. It was uncanny and sometimes scary. Most of us simply do not operate that way. It was as if he had a mind like the parts bins in his father's auto dealership.

His father, John, had great influence on him and when he was inaugurated as President at MSU, Mike came as close to public sentiment as he ever did when he acknowledged that influence. The sense of tragedy which underlies the heart of every Irishman was never far from Mike. His father's cardiac problems were much on Mike's mind but more important was the sense of what he had lost in the early death of that man. He wanted John's approval, his unconditional love. That masculine side of Mike most likely was not apparent to many of you, but it was at the core of his being. He was never a great athlete, never the star--he was a scholar and it takes time for nature to reveal those gifts. His father just missed seeing that great harvest.

My own view is that while Mike would deny it, he was a good deal more, from the point of view of personality, like his fiery mother, Debbie. We all noticed the sharpness and quickness of his reactions--as a counterpuncher he had no equal. Also she endowed him with the fierce competitiveness--after all the average human being does not write all those books just for the fun of it--with the will to win, with unyielding identification with the underdog. Just roam through a stack of his writings: they are concerned primarily with power. How do we attain it? How do we use it? What are the intended and unintended outcomes? The war of the copper kings was most spectacularly waged by underground miners deep in the bowels of quartzite veins. But the real war, the battles to be won or lost, were with lobbyists, legislators, voters. The victors possessed the will to win and it was the power of their ideas which provided the foundation for all victory. Scratch Mike's thought and work deeply and you have the ultimate battlefield: that of men's hearts and minds. Debbie and John together gave him that.

So these are some of the things we celebrate. It is not possible to recreate the color, the verve, that enlarged sense of being we all associate with Michael Peter Malone. It is wrong too, simply to associate all that he was and all that he did with words and print. He loved administration--the use of power to do those things he thought important. He absorbed the land grant ethos early and never lost it. These were his people. In practical terms he liked building things. In a subconscious manner, these structures may be a reflection of his views that this tough western environment shaped emotions and ideas: men and women were slow to change but provide the new environments and change would come.

Some of the campus infrastructure would have been remade had he never existed. But how it was done and then how the final product would look all bear his mark. When the center of the campus was excavated for the new steam and utility lines, he loved to look at the huge machines and imagine himself back on those combines in the Palouse hills. You could see the little boy in him then.

He enjoyed people of all kinds. Just a couple of weeks ago he spent a few hours with a Bozeman sixth grade class. He would sell learning, history and MSU to anyone who would listen. Back in the early l970s when we were trying to get the Montana Committee for the Humanities up and running, we discussed ways of getting a busy group of people out in the middle of summertime to talk about setting up a community based set of programs. We had the good idea of getting Mike and Richie Roeder to put on a roadshow--a half a dozen different presentations around the state on Montana history topics. That indeed did bring out people and accomplished what was necessary to secure some support for the humanities in Montana. People liked to hear and talk with Mike on their own turf--he radiated an instinctive knowledge of their community and its promises and failures. Power after all is not restricted to those making decisions about the state of the nation or state or even the city. Power, as we know from the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, belongs to each of us as an inalienable right. That is democracy in action and Mike was its student at every level. It can best be studied not in the abstract, but in people here and now.

Also his innate ability to be with, work with and stimulate anyone and everyone, was not just the result of a coffee-klatsch small town upbringing. As a historian he learned to survive in the most difficult arena of them all: state and local history. Although it is not apparent, it took very hard work and real decision to obtain the objectivity necessary to deal with subjects in which people and families, factions and resentments were still alive and active. When he wrote of a major economic or political decision, he understood very well that sons and daughters, cousins and grandchildren of those responsible for thost judgements were still alive and concerned with their heritage. It was critical for him to analyze the issues, decisions and personalities fairly and from a scholarly distance. In this case academic excellence translated into a workmanlike and successful relationship with a disparate legislative, lobbyist and corporate groups. People knew that he had higher motives and a long perspective. This quality of objectivity alone places him on a special pedestal as an educational leader.

Like most successful executives, Mike knew how to delegate work and he habitually surrounded himself with capable, friendly and efficient staff. Any visitor to his office as President of MSU would find a relaxed and open atmosphere. He wore his authority easily and visitors instinctively knew that he would welcome reasonable suggestions, ideas and approaches. He was so deeply committed to public education that it was second nature. He better than most knew of the flaws, the missed opportunities, the weaker links. His crusade was for the best possible education for the dollar that Montana State University could deliver. He favored more non-traditional approaches than might be apparent at first glance: research laboratories with no obvious instructional component, but places where interested and self-motivated students could find new pathways to learning and career. He had a special regard for the Museum of the Rockies because it was a larger classroom and it had the advantage if getting very young learners fired up with history and science. It also had the tremendous advantage of being a mortar monument to one historian he deeply admired, Prof. Merrill G. Burlingame.

It is difficult for me to convey the quality of friendship some of us were privileged to share with Mike Malone. In a clumsy attempt to lighten a heavy heart I wore a little pin in my lapel today. Mike always had a pin of one sort or another in his lapel. Sometimes it was a little American flag, other times a Charlie Russell buffalo head reminding him of the important role the Montana State Historical Society had in his life. Other times he would just joke about the little totem he wore. One time I asked him about an unusual, odd, little pin. He said he thought it commemorated the last case of peas put up by the Red Lodge cannery in l952. That was typical of him: wear knowledge and fame lightly for it is God given, not man made.

Tempting indeed is to speak of Mike through his own words, to quote at length from some of the beautiful passages in his many works. Someday someone will publish a selection of this type. In l996 he published his study of the empire builder, James J. Hill, and he dedicated it to his friend and colleague, Richard B. Roeder, who did not live to the work published. As a fitting bookend to the life of our friend and colleague Mike Malone, here in his words, is the last sentence of that biography:

"We shall never see his like again, and that simple fact adds yet another dimension to the fascination of his life..."

We loved you Mike and will miss you now, and think of you always.

Monday, 27 December l999
Pierce C. Mullen