Thank you for that tribute and reaching out by phone today. We could have talked for hours. He may never know the community of people he brought together.
Thank you very much for this wonderful tribute to my dear friend, Mike Leander. We worked together at The Oregonian for 18 years and knew each other well for 30, through good times and bad. His combination of remarkable intelligence and silliness were devastatingly funny, not unlike Monty Python, National Lampoon or The Onion. When he left Portland in 2020, out of concern for his health, in the wake of Covid, I was only able to see him one more time before he passed, but we spoke on the phone regularly. We shared many inside jokes, most of which were based on our mutual appreciation of a slightly dark and somewhat inappropriate sense of humor. But above all else, to his friends and family, Mike was a big-hearted, kind, generous, loyal, loving, incredibly smart man who never condescended to those of us who possesed nothing close to his command of history, geography, economics, languages and politics. He had a tremendous thirst for knowledge and never stopped learning. I will miss him dearly, but will never forget the many times we laughed together, hysterically, like madmen.
Thank you for that tribute and reaching out by phone today. We could have talked for hours. He may never know the community of people he brought together.
Thank you very much for this wonderful tribute to my dear friend, Mike Leander. We worked together at The Oregonian for 18 years and knew each other well for 30, through good times and bad. His combination of remarkable intelligence and silliness were devastatingly funny, not unlike Monty Python, National Lampoon or The Onion. When he left Portland in 2020, out of concern for his health, in the wake of Covid, I was only able to see him one more time before he passed, but we spoke on the phone regularly. We shared many inside jokes, most of which were based on our mutual appreciation of a slightly dark and somewhat inappropriate sense of humor. But above all else, to his friends and family, Mike was a big-hearted, kind, generous, loyal, loving, incredibly smart man who never condescended to those of us who possesed nothing close to his command of history, geography, economics, languages and politics. He had a tremendous thirst for knowledge and never stopped learning. I will miss him dearly, but will never forget the many times we laughed together, hysterically, like madmen.
John Denner