Deceased March 5, 2017
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In Memory
Mike died on March 5. He was married for 65 years to Brenda, and they had three children: Diane Krasnick, Joe Silin and Amy Silin Freas. He is also survived by four grandchildren; a sister; and two sons-in-law.
In our 50th reunion book, he wrote that when he started in business, Silin Manufacturing Co. had one factory. When he retired, it had seven factories and sales had expanded 19 times.
“My grandparents and parents,” he wrote, “taught us as young children that a good life must be founded on ethical principles. At Amherst we young adults learned to live for love, truth and beauty, in that order. Experience has shown me that my parents and our teachers put me on the right track.”
One of Mike’s classmates remembers his penetrative and clearly expressed comments in a western literature section freshman year, and also remembers living near each other on the second floor of Morrow Hall, where they exchanged records of mid- and late-1930s African-American improvisatory blues and jazz.
“Mike was on a winning soccer team,” this classmate writes. “Then he was a navigator in planes out of England over the Continent at a time when you could hardly face the casualty rates. We saw each other over the years, one of the last times talking about his father, Joseph; when I spelled out Tyndale’s rendering, ‘… the Lorde was with Joseph, and he was a luckie fellowe,’ we burst into improvising luckie fellowe as our way of gratefully remembering his father.
“What a path Mike beckoned, imbuing it all with ironic but never bitter humor, a friend assuring friend that the tree of life endures war but is nurtured by peace.”
Andrew Foley ’44