Malvin Jay Michelson - Thiery

Malvin Jay Michelson-Thiery, 91 passed away on November 12, 2024 at Cayuga Medical Center. He was born the third day of February, 1933, in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn to Samuel and Betty Hausler Michelson, Mal was graduated from Lincoln High School, earned his Bachelor’s degree from City College of New York, Masters from the University of Arizona, and PhD in chemistry from the University of Colorado.

He was grateful to have come of age at a time when opportunities for education (free tuition at City College, for example) and employment had increased for many people of modest means. He enjoyed a peripatetic career as a chemist for Texaco, Heyden Newport Chemical Corp., and for Corning Glass Works; as a science teacher at Notre Dame High School in Elmira; at teaching positions in chemistry at Marist College, where he was chosen Teacher of the Year and helped develop Marist's Environmental Science program, Elmira College, Okanagan University College, Penticton, BC, and at Tompkins Cortland Community College; and as a teaching associate at Cornell University, where he felt privileged to work with its world-renowned faculty, including Nobel laureate  Roald Hoffman and the gracious, brilliant Stephen Lee.  While he recounted the joys of his short stint as a professional dishwasher (“When you left for the day, it was over and entropy was defeated!”), he had a passion for teaching, and felt blessed to connect, years later, with students whose lives he had affected for the better. He also said that one of his greatest sources of happiness was attending seminars on the Cornell campus to witness intelligent people solving difficult problems.

He received a number of National Science Foundation grants, was a member of Phi Lambda Upsilon, the national chemistry honor society, and Sigma Xi, the national research honor society.  He was also affiliated with the Naturalist Club, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Hudson River Environmental Society, and the American Chemical Society, in which he held several elected offices.

Politically passionate, during the Vietnam War he served as a draft counselor in Poughkeepsie, and was one of the founders of an alternative community newspaper, Common Sense, and the Environmental Awareness Handbook. Having dealt with mood disorder issues himself, he reached out to help others as a founding member of Ithaca’s BiPolar Explorers’ Club, and as a ten-year crisis-line volunteer for Ithaca’s Suicide Prevention and Crisis Services.

He leaves his wife, Marybeth, whom he married in 1976, his children by his first marriage to Ethel Rubin: Beth Michelson of New Paltz, NY, and Amy (Matthew Liebman) Michelson of Acton, MA,  and Marybeth’s children: Matthew (Michele Exposite) Valaik of Ithaca, and Jennifer (Paul) Mather of Elmira, NY,  and grandchildren Sarah (Scott Travers) Liebman, and Benjamin (Clara Herrera), Hannah, Boaz, and Noah Mather, and great-grandchildren Alicia and Adrianna Herrera, and brother Stuart Michelson of Lansdale, PA. He was predeceased by sisters Lynda Michelson of Coconut Creek, FL, and Phyllis Michelson of Deerfield Beach, FL.

He and Marybeth moved from Spencer, NY to downtown Ithaca in their retirement years, and were early adopters of Ithaca Carshare and frequent TCAT bus riders.  And while he enjoyed movies, theater, exercise classes at Lifelong, and Ithaca’s many wonderful restaurants, he was equally happy reading, especially history of science, biography and books about baseball, and working Sudoku and crossword puzzles. He considered himself an urban hermit. Friends and colleagues remember him for his gentle, compassionate, energetic approach to teaching, his elfish charm, and his ferocious handball and racquetball skills.

Gifts in Mal’s memory may be made to Suicide Prevention and Crisis Service, the Tompkins County Public Library, Doctors Without Borders, ACLU, The Southern Poverty Law Center, or The Environmental Defense Fund. Funeral arrangements have been entrusted to Bangs Funeral Home in Ithaca.