Laurence Bruce Eaton Michie, 77, died peacefully November 7 after a long decline from Alzheimer’s disease. He had beat the odds of many life-threatening conditions that, in several instances, also defined his career decisions.

He started beating the odds the day he was born, July 21, 1941, in Chicago. He was born with pyloric stenosis, a certain death sentence in those days, but he became the first baby in Cook County to have the condition surgically repaired by Dr Loyal Davis, who later became better known to the general public as Nancy Reagan’s father.

Larry spent his early years in Missouri and Santa Fe, New Mexico, until moving to Racine, Wisconsin to live with his aunts when his mother became unable to care for him. He graduated from Racine Lutheran High School and subsequently attended Valparaiso University where he met Virginia, his wife of 56 years.

Virginia moved to Washington, DC in 1961, arriving just as the scaffolding from JFK’s inauguration was being dismantled. Larry arrived later that summer and hung around so much that it seemed easier to fall in love and get married than not and so they did, marrying in 1962 and living happily ever after.

Larry found work with Broadcasting magazine, starting as copy boy before becoming a full-time reporter. It was during his first year at Broadcasting, while reading and drinking a cup of coffee at the same time, thereby blocking his right eye, discovered that he couldn’t see out of his left eye. Many tests later showed an aneurysm that rather than growing as a bulge, was growing alongside the optic nerve and was in danger of reaching the crossing point and damaging his vision in the right eye. In a major surgery that sawed open his forehead where his carotid artery was permanently clamped off and an incision in his throat where the artery also was clamped off, the aneurysm could then be drained (or something of the sort) and it worked!! Virginia took the opportunity to quit a job she disliked to stay home and care for him and they soon took up where they’d left off, living happily ever after.

Larry continued to work for Broadcasting and, after a couple of brief employments, Virginia found her niche in the publications division of the American Chemical Society. Larry moved on to a couple of other publications and then settled at the Carpenter News Bureau owned by Les & Liz Carpenter. Liz was already working for LBJ in the Senate while her husband ran the bureau which provided DC news to a large number of Texas newspapers as well as to Variety magazine.

Larry thrived. He covered the Federal Communications Commission and Capitol Hill and all aspects of the burgeoning entertainment venues in the DC area in what would become his lifetime affiliation with Variety. His life had its aspects of “another opening, another show” as he, usually accompanied by Virginia, reviewed productions opening at the National Theater, Arena Stage, Olney Theater, Wolf Trap Farm and what is now the JFK Performing Arts Center.

It was also, of course, a time of enormous upheaval in the history of the United States. JFK was assassinated, LBJ sworn in, Martin Luther King assassinated, Bobby Kennedy assassinated, rioting in the streets of DC, at the Democratic convention in Chicago, and Larry was there, covering these events not so much as events, but covering how the press was dealing with these events. It was easy for him to work seven days a week and cover entertainment events several evenings a month and love every minute. The Michies were having a grand time living happily ever after.

In late 1973, Les Brown, the television editor of Variety, moved to The New York Times and Syd Silverman, the owner of Variety, asked Larry to come and take his place. It was a bit of a tough decision because Larry loved his job and he and Virginia both loved DC but they’d visited Manhattan a few times and the challenges of a new venue appealed to both of them so off they went.

And it worked. Larry was no longer a one-man-band but the world had been getting smaller since L&V married and faraway places were easier to reach so meetings and conventions and show openings were held in far-flung places and in order to attract press coverage, spouses were usually invited to tag along thus Virginia had lots of fun, free trips and lots of midnight drives to find the nearest Western Union office so Larry could file his stories — remember the days of no texting?

They bought a condo on West End Avenue and Virginia spent her free time scraping the ceiling of all its peeling paint beginning her unintentional career of buying “fixer-uppers.” But Virginia also became gainfully employed at Variety when it was discovered that a recently-hired subscription manger, unable to keep up with the volume of renewals had been stuffing them in a drawer at the end of the day and neglecting to do anything with them in the following days, weeks, months. Syd hired Virginia to come in and clean up the mess which took many months but eventually it got fixed and then it was time to get ready for a new automated labeling system and the 3×5” index cards that showed the detail for all subscribers were a nightmare of cross-outs for address changes, renewal dates, multi-addresses for those with multi-homes and so Virginia cleaned those up for many months and then what to do next? They were still living happily ever after but both of them were kinda bored compared with the life they’d led in DC.

Their next-door neighbors in the condo building had a cute cottage in western Massachusetts that they’d allowed L&V to use for several vacations and Virginia had become totally in love with the idea of moving to the country where Larry could write novels and she could do something artistic and they could live happily, happily ever after. So off they went to a house built in the early-1800s that was in great condition (the broker said so) and six years later it really was (almost) in great condition and working on it any longer seemed a bore. So what to do? No, they couldn’t put on a show. But they could buy a newspaper!! The Shelburne Falls & West County News. And thus began another wonderful life.

During the years they owned the newspaper, Larry once again began working for Variety, traveling a couple of times a year with another ex-Variety reporter, Frank Segers, to countries all over the world doing special sections on that country’s entertainment business. They traveled to South Korea for stories on the preparations for the Olympics soon to be held there and going on to China not long before the Tiananmen Square uprisings. In fact, over the years, they traveled so many places that Virginia uses trying to name the countries instead of counting sheep as a going-to-sleep device.

In 1993, Larry was discovered to have colon cancer which was successfully treated but it seemed prudent to sell the paper and do something less dependent on the Michies’ healthiness.

That job Virginia had been happy to quit back in the DC days had provided one positive. When she had worked there she became friendly with Jody O’Brien who was dating and married Dick Reston and they evolved into a foursome for bridge, going to baseball games, wishing they’d visited them when Dick was a correspondent in Moscow and visiting them in London when Dick was reporting from there and now Jody and Dick were running the family’s newspaper on Martha’s Vineyard. They suggested that the Michies come and work with them at the Vineyard Gazette.

It was a good decision to do so because a couple of years later, Larry was discovered to have liver cancer. However, as his surgeon gleefully told him, it’s no problem: remember Prometheus! And he also took out Larry’s appendix, just for good measure. They enjoyed their years at the Gazette but hitting their 60s it seemed a good time to retire which they did in 2000 and moved back to western Massachusetts.

Since then, they moved a few more times (to Alabama for a beautiful view, and five different places here in western Massachusetts; moving seems to be Virginia’s hobby) and Larry wrote a few more novels (that being Larry’s hobby; two of the novels are available thru Amazon).

And so in the grand scheme of things they did indeed live happily, happily ever after.

Donations in Larry’s memory may be sent to the Alzheimer’s Foundation or to the Dakin Humane Society, Leverett, MA.

A celebration of Larry’s life will be held at a later date in Washington, D.C.