John Michael Oleyer – 50th Reunion Essay

John Michael Oleyer

Date of Death: 13-Apr-2006

College: Ezra Stiles

(This memorial for John Oleyer was submitted by Peter Rodgers, John Knudson, and Jim Grew.)

We lost John Oleyer to multiple sclerosis in 2006, but those of us who were his dear friends at Yale keep him close even in death. Some like Lamar Smith, Jim Grew, and Tom Brown were his freshman roommates in Vanderbilt Hall; others, among them Peter Rodgers, John Knudson, Frank Northam, Bill Dahl, John Banderob, and John Yarmuth, shared his Vanderbilt entryway and Ezra Stiles College; more knew John from classes and activities.

John was self-effacing; he was an astute observer; he had a devilish sense of humor. John was smart, but he was easily bored; he loved Yale, but like many of us, he took less than full advantage of what it offered; he was ambitious, but sometimes distracted; he was a romantic; he was a people person. Many of us became his lifelong friends; and, to a person, we have considered John one of the truly special people we encountered throughout our lives.

Looking back, we can still see John hunched over the coffee table in his room in Ezra Stiles, drinking beer, smoking a cigarette, and playing bridge (or cribbage or Risk or, in desperation, War) into the wee hours of Sunday morning before finally turning to that English 29 paper that was due in Giamatti’s class a few hours later, and then producing a fine and insightful piece of writing.

John grew up in Bristol, Connecticut. His father was a long-time mechanical foreman for GM there and his mother a gifted head recovery room nurse at Bristol Hospital. John was raised with a love of learning, a strong moral compass, and a deep concern and empathy for the underdogs in life. After graduation, John volunteered to be a cook in the Army Reserve in order to deal with the Vietnam War draft. He used to say that he could cook for a hundred soldiers but not for his family. He went on to law school at the University of Virginia and then into private law practice in Hartford, Connecticut. By his early thirties, before the onset of his MS, he had become one of the best bankruptcy lawyers in the state and remained so after he was confined to a wheel chair. Even when officially “retired,” he was a presence in his law offices, coaching and mentoring his younger colleagues.

John loved to be around women, and they loved him; but he adored only one woman, his high school sweetheart Cindy, whom he married shortly after graduation. She was his anchor in life, kept him on the straight and narrow, saw him through his twenty-year struggle with MS and gave him great happiness. Even as the disease was taking its toll, John found delight in his four children and remained deeply involved in their lives, loving, mentoring, hectoring, and inspiring them as they became the terrific people they are today. Many of us keep up with Cindy, who despite the challenge of John’s long illness and his early death, remains a strong, deeply religious, and optimistic woman.

We remember John’s running commentary on each and every woman the rest of us dated (none of whom, of course, could match his “Cin”). We laugh about his coaching the Jews among us on how to behave while attending mass with their Catholic girlfriends. We can relive all the times John listened to our academic complaints, soothed our lovelorn hearts and gave us perspective on the world around us.

Perhaps John can be best described by a line from his father Michael’s obituary (and he would have been delighted to be so described): He “was a sweet model of kindness and generosity with never an unsupportive or unkind word about any fellow being, with the exception of politicians and opponents of the Boston Red Sox.” We miss John still. And we always will be grateful to have been his friends.