Remembering Greg Reisig
A Changeable Day on the Lake by Mark Smith
This week I lost a friend & mentor, Greg Reisig. Greg was my publisher back in the 90s when I wrote for his Lake Country Gazette out of Elk Rapids. He was a man with an amazingly gentle soul who could nonetheless be fierce & determined in defense of Michigan’s environment. It’s not hyperbole to say that without Greg there would probably be no Leelanau.com. He helped me find my voice in supporting this beautiful slice of planet Earth & definitely should have been on the editorial board of my online magazine, the Northern Michigan Journal. I’ll miss him dearly.
Bill Latka of Oil & Water Don’t Mix penned a great tribute to Greg, who was a board member of that organization & the co-chair of the Northern Michigan Environmental Action Council (NMEAC):
Since his early days as an environmental journalist and then for decades as a key protector of trees, water, and air for all of northern Michigan with NMEAC, Greg was a fearless yet gentle champion for the environment.
NMEAC has set up an endowment fund to create The Greg Reisig Prize for Environmental Journalism to celebrate his accomplishments. If you value the work that Oil & Water Don’t Mix is doing, you should know that Greg was a key part of it. I invite you to contribute to fund the award so that future generations will know how much he made a difference every day.
His support of the campaign to shut down Line 5 brought a kind focus and keen sense of optimism for the work that kept us all going. He will be dearly missed.
Amen.
Mark took this photo last October at the the Wilcox-Palmer-Shah Preserve just north of Elk Rapids. More from Mark at downstreamer on Flickr.
