Happy Birthday, Mike, wherever you may be in that "undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns." Our city and our country need you more than ever. To remember you is to recover hope.

Glad to remember our colleague Mike Bowler, a great journalist and, despite that, a wonderful human being. Will we see his like again? I think Mike would have answered, YES.

We remember each year.

Dear Friends of Mike, while I am unlikely to have met any of you over the years, I am delighted to remember with you, the life of Mike Bowler. We were briefly friends who shared stories of public education in the two "great' and "troubled" and "beloved" urban school districts- Baltimore and Oakland, CA! I as principal at Hillcrest Elementary School in Oakland! 
Mike and I shared the importance of our overlapping professional interests we had in making our schools better. I was so impressed that he took one year to really understand one school in Baltimore (I hope I remember that story right), and we got to contrast observations he made with my own experience three thousand miles away. A cheer and a toast to Mike, a true American gem!!!

I'm delighted to remember Mike on his birthday. He was a journalist and public servant and gentleman from an era we may never see again.

My fondest memories of him circle around his running the opinion page at The Evening Sun. He was always quick to recognize what a great writer I was! Seriously, he was one of the best and most professional editors I ever worked with. I have to say I am glad he did not have to live with the present emergencies. Although he would have instantly understood Black Lives Matter, and he would have ripped the Degenerate in the White House a new one.

Wow, I am so sorry to have missed saying goodbye to Mike last year! I was just thinking about him today, and I wondered why I hadn't seen his FB postings in such a long time. So I looked him up and I found out why. 
Mike was a wonderful long distance friend, and my visits to him in Baltimore, and his visits to me in Oakland, allowed us to share the joys and sorrows and silliness, but also the nuggets and jewels that represent public education in America. I treasured his journalistic perspective.. being able to tell the truth in a way that meant something to the reader, and also to the subject. 
He taught me to love and respect education journalists when they did their job! And he did his job! In these final years, he showed me how to age with dignity, and to face this next phase of life with courage, tenacity, and a biting sense of irony and humor.

They say what really matters in one's life is the impact one has on the lives of others. Although I had left Catonsville decades ago, I had come to know Mike as my aged 100 year old mother had lived across the street from Mike and Margaret for close to 30 years. The warmth and giving soul that Mike was, were all immediately apparent. Willing to chip in digging out snowbanks in front of my mother's house, remarking on the state of local and national politics, and all the while displaying jovial laughter to boot, were all hallmarks of the man he was. Mike was a special breed, a true giver, and a man possessed of strong values. My dearly departed mother and I were privileged to have known him.

Mike Bowler was one of the nicest most intelligent sensitive human beings I have ever come to know. He was brave and fought life, because he loved life and his family. We met first on my show in the early 90's, I came to respect him deeply for his honesty. I really really liked him My heart is with the family and will keep him alive in our words and thoughts.

I knew Mike as my editor for The Evening Sun's opinion page.
We scooped the nation in 1990 when we predicted that Clarence Thomas would take Thurgood Marshall's place on the Supreme Court.
Mike did not take all my submissions, but he published most of them. We never disagreed over copy. Which makes him, among many other distinctions, an editor of the greatest wisdom and judgment!
I am grateful to be a small part of the celebration of his great life.

Posted for Jeanne Saddler
Mike became my dear colleague and mentor when I joined The Sun after grad school. It was my great good fortune to work with someone with his great intelligence, professionalism, keen sense of humor and constant fairness. 
  Most importantly, Mike remained a wonderful friend for decades. Mike and Margaret were part of many great occasions in my life and were held in especially high regard by my husband, Warren Leary, and my mother Thelma Richardson. 
  Mike was even “adopted” as a godson by my mother. He loved to tease her about her erratic driving skills during one of Mike & Margaret’s visits with her in Detroit.
  I treasure most of all the memory of Mike’s honest, open, quizzical gaze and the ultimate kindness in his voice. He was a great soul who touched and enriched my life.

Mike was a charter member of The Setting Sun walkers, also consisting at various times of ex-Social Security honcho Gilbert Fisher, erstwhile Sun feature writer Jack Dawson (now in Canada), cartoonist Mike Lane, copy chief Bob Grover, City Hall reporter etc. John O'Donnell and yours truly. Ours were thematic walks. We once did the Gettysburg battleground and twice sauntered in D.C., when Mike was with the federal education department. An annual report chronicled the previous year's achievements, including a list of restaurants that we ate at.
I admired Mike's openness about what was once known as the Big C. HIs posts about his challenges combined seriousness with humor.
Mike was a man of many talents, with a marvelous career. He even authored a brief book about the city school system, little known but essential to anyone aspiring to comprehend what's going on. 
The high point, if you ask me, was his editorship of The Evening Sun's Other Voices page. He developed a stable of interesting writers. That's where Gilbert Sandler became the wise old man he is recognized to be. Among Mike's finds was H.B. Johnson, an inmate dying of AIDS, thanks to heroin guards provided. The staid old Sun morning paper never would publish a convicted armed robber's writings--or poetry, for that matter-- but Mike did. He also championedJohnson's release, which Governor Schaefer made possible. Johnson won WMAR TV's annual writing prize twice, once in prison, the other time while a free man a couple of years before his death.
I raise my mug to Mike. Our common close friend, Thelma Richardson, Jeanne Saddler's mother, often repeated the opinion that Mike was "the smartest man in America" and deserved to be president . . . 
At 98, she now has high hopes for Mike's grandson.

Dear Margaret and Stephen,
We are thinking of you and your family with love, wishing you strength and resilience as you cope with the loss of Mike. He was a wonderful, wonderful person who inspired us as education writers and made us better journalists by his example. He cared so much about his work and the people around him, and we cared deeply about him. We feel so fortunate to have known him. Kathy and Will

The trip to Jerusalem together.
The trip to Florida together.
To ballgames. To beers.
And our special times together with the
Setting Sun Walkers after retirement .
So many other...
Goodbye, brother Mike