Michael J. Alaimo

Michael Jospeh Alaimo, 92, passed away peacefully at his home at Villa Marin in San Rafael, CA on June 28, 2023 surrounded by his loving family and caregivers. He was born in Lawrence, MA in November 1930 to Antonio and Josephine (Palumbo) Alaimo, immigrants from Sicily. Always proud of his heritage, he grew up in the Italian neighborhood of Lawrence, where his parents and elder sister worked in the textile mills. He loved the traditional bakeries and remembered his father making wine and his mother cooking batches of tomato sauce every Sunday. With train tracks running close by the tenement building, he developed a lifelong love of trains and waving to the conductors. Mike grew up speaking Sicilian at home and received a scholarship to the all-boys Central Catholic High School.

When the textile mills closed after World War II, his family drove to California for opportunities in fruit canneries in what is now Silicon Valley. They settled in San Jose, where Mike attended San Jose High School and was pleased to see female classmates after his previous all-boys education. Mike was the first in his family to attend college, walking to the San Jose State University campus. To earn money during college, he picked peaches and worked overnight at a fruit cannery (he soon became tired of fruit cocktail even into later years).

After graduating with a degree in journalism, Mike worked at a small town newspaper in Gilroy, becoming a volunteer firefighter there in exchange for free room and board at the firehouse. This came in handy in the 1970s when he, along with another bystander, helped a neighbor out of a burning house down the street from his home in San Rafael. Mike also served in the US Army Reserve in the 1950s, starting out in a camouflage unit. He was not impressed with the effectiveness of throwing green netting over tanks to disguise them as shrubs. Fortunately, the Army decided his journalism skills would be put to better use in his new role as company clerk.

After taking a job with Oman Publishing in San Francisco, Mike moved to a boarding house in the Marina district, where he met his future wife, Marjorie. They married in 1963 at St. Vincent de Paul Church. They enjoyed the San Francisco of the late 1950s and early 1960s, walking the Golden Gate Bridge, dining on crab and sourdough at the wharf, and frequenting the Purple Onion comedy club. He loved satire and all kinds of humor and later let his daughters stay up for many episodes of Monty Python and Fawlty Towers. After Mike’s job moved north to Mill Valley, Mike and Marge raised their family in San Rafael. Mike enjoyed tending the yard, growing tomatoes and raspberries, and letting his daughters tag along to his favorite place, the hardware store. Friends and family miss his expertise at the barbecue grill.

Mike was a writer, editor, and later publisher for the trade magazine Meat Industry (later Meat and Poultry). Over his career he enjoyed the friends he made at trade conferences in Chicago and in Frankfurt, Germany. Highlights were traveling to Tokyo in the 1980s to see the world’s largest fish market in action and a trip to New Zealand for an article on sheep ranching (and a chance to go trout fishing).

As a young man, Mike developed a passion for hiking, camping, canoeing, and fishing throughout northern California and British Columbia. He loved collecting and poring over road maps and loading up the green Chevy station wagon to take his family on annual fishing trips to Lakes Basin in the Sierras and on drives along the Marin and Sonoma coasts. After retirement, Mike learned to fly fish and was especially close to friends who took annual fishing trips on the Deschutes River in Oregon or along the Sacramento River out of Redding or Weaverville, and he took his daughter Julie on many trips. Mike also supported stream habitat restoration projects, and he attributed his appreciation of clean lakes, rivers and oceans to his memories of seeing the Merrimack River in Lawrence flowing different colors from textile mill dyes.

Mike was preceded in death by his parents, sisters Ann Cabral and Jeannette Wentworth, and brother Silvio Alaimo. He is survived by his wife of 60 years Marjorie Alaimo, daughters Julie Alaimo and Vickie Alexander, many nieces and nephews, and close friends in Marin. His expert caregivers were amazing. A memorial celebration will be planned at a later date. Mike supported many environmental and educational causes, including Cast Hope fly fishing for young people, Trout Unlimited, the Marin Agricultural Land Trust, and San Jose State University’s School of Journalism.