Michael Patrick Dillon

Michael Dillon Obituary

DILLON--Michael Patrick, artist, died November 3rd at age 60, in NYC. He is survived by his beloved family, Sean and Kristine Dillon, Kathleen Dillon, Sheila and Karl Unger, Bob, Judy, Josh, Leta Natkin, 18 nieces and nephews, cousins and friends, especially Joan. He is happily remembered and sadly missed. Wake at the Riverside Chapel, 76th St. and Amsterdam Ave., on November 11th from 2-4pm and 7-9pm. Funeral Mass at Holy Name Church, 96th St. and Amsterdam Ave., on November 12th at 10am.

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Published by New York Times on Nov. 8, 2007.

Memories and Condolences
for Michael Dillon

10 Entries

Kathi-ann Wyatt

November 11, 2008

Uncle Mike was always a great story teller and loved to torment me; in hindsight I loved it. As I was growing up, Uncle Mike was always a special presence whenever I saw him. He continued his legacy with the next generation. Everyone was always thrilled when Uncle Mike would show up at a family gathering; I miss those times. I will always cherish the times we spent together and take to heart his advice.
I miss you and love you Uncle Mike.

Kristine Dillon

November 18, 2007

Read by Liam Dillon, nephew, at his funeral mass

A Psalm of David, Psalm 23

Then Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the path of righteousness for his name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

Kristine Dillon

November 16, 2007

Read by Maire Dillon, niece of Michael, at his funeral mass:

"Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak whispers the oe'r fraught heart and bids it break."
William Shakespeare, from MacBeth

A Prayer

When I come to the end of the road
and the sun has set for me
I want no rites in a gloom filled room
Why cry for a soul set free?

Miss me a little - but not too long
And not with your head bowed low
Remember the love
That once we shared
Miss me - but let me go.

For this is a journey
That we all must take
And each must go alone
It's all part of the Master's plan
A step in the road to home.

When you are lonely and sick of heart
Go to the friends we know
and bury your sorrows
in doing good deeds
Miss me - but let me go

An Irish Blessing

May the road rise to meet you
May the wind be always at your back
May the sunshine warm your face,
the rain fall soft upon your fields
And until we meet again May God
hold you in the palm of his hand.
Amen

Love from the Dillon clan, Sean, Kristy, Liam, Mikey, Anneliese, Maire, and Ciaran

Robert Papp

November 15, 2007

Mike, you are one of the most interesting, unusual, challenging, perceptive, funny, creative, messy, facinating, offbeat, spiritual, good-hearted people I have ever met and I have met a lot of people in a lot of strange places. Somehow, whenever I was in New York I was drawn to you, to your apartment, to your stacks of paintings, to the little upper West Side neighborhood of which you were the king. I talk to you now as if you are still there, which like the Madonna of Flushing, you truly still are as you will be me missed by all who knew you, regardless of how often they saw you or enjoyed your company. Wherever you are know that you added a great deal to the lives of many people, effortlessly, simply, and without design.

James Kaplan

November 14, 2007

Mike

This is a raw deal.

Death is an impossible thing, an incomprehensible and unacceptable thing, especially if it comes too early. It feels as if a conversation has been rudely interrupted — which I’m sure is literally true, where Mike is concerned, with everybody here today. He had lots of conversations going on. He loved to talk, and it was always a great pleasure to hear that gravelly, unmistakable voice on the other end of the telephone — although having such a totally unmistakable voice wasn’t such a great deal for Michael when, as was frequently the case, he was calling pretending to be somebody else: Dr. Irving Goldfinger, for example (complete with a terrible Yiddish accent), or the Reverend Al Sharpton. The Reverend Al never sounded like that.

“Hello, Michael,” I would say, right away. And he would laugh, delighted to be busted. How he loved to laugh. He was pretty good at making other people laugh, too.

I knew Mike just short of 35 years. Frankly, I could have used another 35. I met him and Bob and Judy and Josh and Leda all on the same beautiful summer afternoon in 1973, when a lady who was an old Chicago friend of Bob and Judy’s, and for whom I was working for as possibly the world’s most incompetent mother’s helper, took me over to their place in Redding to meet them. I was a painter then, too — or I thought I might be. But it was pretty bracing to see that houseful of glorious canvases by Natkin and Dolnick, both of whom could summon up the skills of Bonnard or Klee or Cézanne, seemingly at the snap of a finger, even as they painted in an artistic language all their own. It was a magical house, and Josh and Leda were magical kids, and Mike was Bob’s magical studio assistant, kind of a cross between a leprechaun and a linebacker and an Irish sea captain, with his beard and pipe and cup of tea and his Popeye forearms, his sure instinct for high art and low comedy, and his gift for making gorgeously carpentered canvas stretchers, even on the enormous scale that Bob frequently needed.

Within a couple of months, having proven my ineptitude at helping mothers, I too was working for Bob, as the assistant assistant. Yes, now it can be told: Mike was my boss! Of course Bob was my real boss, but Michael was the guy who showed me what to do and, to the extent that I was able to copy him, how to do it. I was not the world’s most incompetent studio assistant, but I was definitely not playing in the same league as Mr. Dillon. Still, he and Bob were infinitely patient with me, and for the short time I was an employee, I had the time of my life — how could you not, with all that beauty around, all that amazing food, and all those laughs?

I went my own way, but the transition from studio assistant to friend — of the Natkins and of Mike — was effortless. Where Michael was concerned, part of the excitement of being his friend was seeing him emerge over the years as an important painter in his own right. Maybe at first he’d been intimidated by Bob’s dizzying output, but as Michael grew into middle age, he developed an artistic assurance, and a relationship to beauty, and a style, all his own. His painting was as strong and as physical as he was, and with the same puckish sense of humor, especially when human forms — and sometimes elements of playful self-portraiture — crept into the abstract compositions.

He was an earthy man with a keen sense of the sublime, and I think of his best paintings as graceful blends of air and earth — symbolic self-portraits, if you will. But he was also the world’s least pretentious aesthete, and as his eye grew ever more sophisticated over the years, his sense of humor — well, maybe it’s best to say his sense of humor stayed grounded. Certain themes remained constant. There was the legendary Mrs. Murphy: Many of you will know what I’m talking about. And the time early in my marriage I told Mike I had missed a phone call of his because I had been taking out the garbage. I really had been taking out the garbage! But Michael decided he knew exactly what “taking out the garbage” really meant. For years he rarely missed an opportunity to drop the phrase into the conversation.

That ongoing conversation I thought would never end.

Because he had that strength and that earthiness, it’s tempting to think that Mike was just Mike — to overlook his complexity. But as I’ve talked to others who were close to him, and especially to his sister Kathleen, I’ve learned of sides of Michael I hadn’t known about before. His huge gift for friendship. His faith. His deep connection to his church. His almost reckless generosity.

And over the past years, a sweet new note crept into his personality: his quiet love for Joan.

You all know of Mike’s great love for sports, and especially, of course, football. Fifteen years ago, when the New York Times assigned me, a guy who didn’t know a halfback from a hole in the ground, to profile the then coach of the New York Giants, the delightful Bill Parcells, I thought I’d better take Mr. Dillon along with me to Giants training camp to tell me what I was looking at. It was there that Mike had the rare privilege of seeing Parcells chew me out, as only Parcells could, for standing on the wrong side of some rope on the practice field. Michael dined out on that story for years. “You should’ve seen the look on Jim’s face,” he’d laugh.

He was patient with my sports ignorance, but only to a point. My wife and I went to visit him at Mount Sinai just a couple of weeks ago, and as the many of you who also visited him know, he was having a tough time. Not saying much at all. You knew Mike Dillon was having a really tough time if he wasn’t saying much. At one point, in the hospital room, his sister Kathleen was telling me where their sister Sheila lived in Florida. Mike was just lying there with his eyes closed. “It’s in the same place the Mets have their spring training,” Kathleen said. “Oh, you know.”

“West Palm Beach?” I said.

“Port Saint Lucie,” Mike growled.

Another side of Mike: He believed in the supernatural. He was open about it, even matter-of-fact — and when I talked with him, I believed, too. I think I’d like to go on believing. For years the rumor persisted that he thought he’d seen a Renaissance angel sort of float across Bob and Judy’s living room in the country one night. It was a great story, but when I brought it up with him on the phone a little while ago, he debunked it. “It wasn’t a Renaissance angel,” he said, as if he were talking to a slow student. “But it was something.”

I’ll bet it was.

So was he.

matthew licht

November 14, 2007

mike drew circles around art school
>> he rowed around this island alone
>> he had forearms of granite
>> and somehow managed
>> to have his portrait
>> carved in white marble
>> riding a turtle
>> 500 years before he was born
>>
>>
>> what i love about mike is we were always laughing
>> when we were together
>> when people laugh it means they're happy
>>
>>
>> with lots of love,
>> matthew licht

J.P. Natkin

November 14, 2007

MIKE

Mike. Just Mike. I know many others with the same first name: Michael Sharpe, Mike Colantuono, Michael Bloomberg, Mike O’Flynn, Mike Foley…the list goes on. But only Mike was just Mike, a man and personality so big only one name was needed, like Prince, Pele, Christo, or Madonna. If you refer to Mike, everybody knows your talking about Mike.

Mike was my brother from another mother, he was my friend, coach, and teacher, and Uncle Mike the Walrus to my kids.

Mike was probably one of the most multifaceted people any of us will ever know. Only Mike could simultaneously be humble, proud, sophisticated, unassuming, supportive, and, yes, bossy. A true gourmand and accomplished chef, he prided himself on his pumpkin crème brulee, the refined capstone of his legendary Thanksgiving Day feasts. Yet, Mike would glow and swoon when describing a favorite meal of deep-fried ripper dogs and root beer from Rutt’s Hut in Clifton. Mike could tell from 20 feet away which Jermyn Street tailor made a bespoke shirt by details of the collar, cuffs, or cotton, yet he was most at ease in one of his many gray t-shirts he collected over the years. Or worse the bathrobe he liberated from the Bristol Hotel in Vienna and wore on a daily basis for more than two decades. And Mike was the same way with people, collecting a network of friends as diverse as this city he called home. He was Mike the Mayor of 104th Street, on a first name basis with what seemed like the entire upper west side, dolling out advice to every local cop, neighbor, passer-by and constituent in his realm. Many times while walking the Broadway beat with Mike he would stop and turn to a passerby and pick-up on a conversation or thought from weeks or months before. And if you asked him who the person was, a simple name was never adequate…a thorough debriefing on their complete background, family history, and how they fit into his broad network would follow. I have always been in awe of how he seemed to know everybody, and know them well. His network of friends was nothing short of incredible, and included artists, authors, engineers, actors, politicians, cooks, naval cryptological officers, beat cops, poets, wurstmachers, bus drivers, Fortune 100 CEOs, garmentos, teachers, Apache insurance-brokers, fire chiefs, and the list goes on. In fact I reckon Mike easily halved the concept of six degrees of separation with his sprawling spider web network of friendships.

Mike’s sense of humor was perhaps his best known and sometimes feared trait. He could be dry, ironic, fierce, and fearless when it came to practical jokes. Yet he was always gracious and kind, and he could take it as well as he could dish it out. Over the years, Mike received from friends and acquaintances hundreds of postcards bearing the same image of the fountain of Bacchus in the Boboli Gardens in Florence Italy. This marble statue of the Roman God of wine, naked and riding a tortoise, bears a striking, some would say frightening, resemblance to Mike. Yet each time he received one of these cards, he would double over and laugh like it was the first time. And he could pull me out of a foul mood in a heartbeat with crazy tales of his youth in Moonachie playing touch football with Hymie Baker; living behind the curtain at the Fox Theater in Hackenack; or by spontaneously dancing the Oriol Thomas Roll, a particularly hazardous jig now forever known in my family as the Dillon Doodle.

Mike was never lacking an opinion, and was known to dish out unsolicited advice to anybody and everybody, ranging from the President of Pepsico to the Governor of Puerto Rico. The thing is, with Mike it was sincere and unobnoxious, and more often than not, was accepted with genuine gratitude. Fortunately, the Governor of Puerto Rico did not follow all of Mike’s unsolicited suggestions, which is partly why Governor Hernandez Colon was shortly thereafter reelected to a second term.

Mike was my big brother. He bought me my first (legal) beers at McSorley’s, introducing me to the proprietor Dick Buggie who regaled me with tales of working anti-crime with the NYPD in the bad old days. At his beloved ale house Mike also introduced me to artist friends and other characters from his days at Cooper Union around the corner. During my brief and highly unsuccessful flirtation with football in 6th grade, Mike went to the Strand Bookstore and searched for out of print books for me by Y.A Tittle, Jerry Kramer, and other NFL greats, as he felt you can only be great at something by learning from the old masters. While my football career proved to be brief and mediocre at best, the books and their old school lessons stayed with me. Mike was always generous and giving, albeit unpredictable in how, when, and where he would demonstrate it. When I was 15 in my first term at boarding school, I was studying one evening when I heard a commotion in the hallway. Standing in the corridor, terrified 10th graders scrambling in his wake, was Mike carrying a 6 foot Italian hero with the works over his head, bellowing “NATKIN! SPECIAL DELIVERY FOR NATKIN!” When my housemates and I finished devouring the welcome snack, I asked him why he drove all the way up to bring me this large treat, he said, in his very matter-of-fact style “well, you said the food here stinks so I thought I’d bring you a sandwich.”

I miss Mike. I miss his generosity, humor, friendship, and kindness. I miss too many things to list here. But most of all I am grateful for having known him and for having had him as part of my life and family. Thanks Mike.

Mary Kliauga

November 12, 2007

Michael Dillon was a great artist, teacher, mentor and friend. He taught "Creative Process" at the Art Center of Northern New Jersey. I enjoyed painting in his class, because he created an environment where everybody felt relaxed, encouraging our creativity. He had a sense of humor and a kind and gentle style of teaching. He encouraged us to "push further" in our own style. His guidance made my painting more exciting. He was very knowledgeable in so many things, especially in art history and artists of all periods. I will always be greateful to him for his guidance in my art. He will be greatly missed by all of us at the Art Center, and we offer our sincere condolences to his family. Love and prayers, Mary Yim Kliauga

Evelyn Unger

November 11, 2007

We will miss you Uncle Mike. Your stories were the best! The world is brighter because of you. Love from Bella and Evelyn

Therese Dannels

November 10, 2007

We extend our sincere sympathy to Sheila, Sean, Kathleen, and all the members of Michael's family. We will miss him at our family gatherings. He always brought laughter and joy. With love from, Dick and Terry

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