THE RIEGLE COMMUNITY SERVICE AWARD EVENT
OCTOBER 24, 5:30 pm
Flint Institute of Arts
The 2013 winners of the Donald Riegle Community Service Awards have been announced: they are Louis Hawkins, Kay Kelly and Mitchell Weiss. Join us at our partner, Flint Institute of Arts, at Kearsley for an evening of food, entertainment and fun as we celebrate the winners contributions to our community. Cost is $125 per person and there are still opportunities for donors and sponsors.
MITCHELL WEISS was born in Chicago on April 13, 1941 at Mt. Sinai Hospital, the son of Julius and Rhea Weiss and has one sibling, sister, Trudie Goldfarb.
He went to the University of Illinois for his B. A., majoring in political science. For the first two years he went to the Navy Pier branch of the University and went down to Champaign-Urbana to complete his bachelor's degree in June of 1963. In the fall of that year, he entered the University of Chicago and received his Master's degree in political science in May of 1966. Mitch went back to the University of Illinois to obtain his Ph.D. in political science, which was granted in the summer of 1975.
Throughout his professional career he taught political science at the college level. He began his teaching career in 1967 as a teaching assistant at the University of Illinois; obtained a temporary instructor at the College of Cortland State University of New York from 1970--71, and came to Charles Stewart Mott Community College where he taught from 1972 until 2007.
Mitchell grew up in Chicago in "all Jewish" neighborhoods-first in the "Great West Side" ghetto and then in RodgersPark and WestRodgersPark. He met his first wife, Lynne, at the Navy Pier Spring Carnival in 1962, and they married on August 25, 1963. Their son, David, was born April 8, 1965; and they adopted their daughter, Gabrielle, on September 21, 1974. David is physiatrist, practicing in his medical field of physical medicine and rehabilitation for 20 years. He is married to Melanie and they have two children, Benjamin who is 18 and Julia who is 16. Gabrielle, who lives on North Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, has been pursuing a public relations career for the past decade, and now is working for U.S. Cellular as one their communication specialists.
Lynne died in 2003 from a rare uterine cancer. After 10 years of widowhood he married Mary Putnam on February 17th of this year in Carlsbad, California. They met in the 2008 presidential election while canvassing the Flint area neighborhoods for Obama, and became friends before they "fell in love". They have begun to live part of their time in Oceanside, California, but their primary home is still Flint.
Mitch has served on the Flint Jewish Federation's Board of Directors since the mid-1980s, chairing its public affairs committee, working to resettle Russian Jewish immigrants, and assisting in drafting the Federation's budget and allocations to Jewish agencies. He has served on the Federation's annual UJA/JFNA campaigns to raise funds for Israel, the local area Jewish community and for emergencies nationally and globally. Mitch also served as the Flint Jewish Federation board President from 2006-2010.
In 2012, he chaired an ad hoc committee that brought together all of the major Flint area Jewish organizations for the first time to celebrate their collective anniversaries with a dinner and entertainment on Armistice Day (November 11th). Also, in that year he participated in the planning and execution of the first annual fundraiser for Jewish Community Services, called "From the Borschtbelt to Bollywood".
Central to his involvement in the general community has been to act with persons and belong to organizations that shared liberal views on implementing progressive policies and programs that would confront and ameliorate various financial, sexual, and racial differences in modern American society. This led him to join the Genesee County Democratic party and become a precinct delegate; to participate in the election (and reelection) of President Obama; to attend weekly rallies throughout 2009 for the passage of health care reform legislation; to attend forums and conventions sponsored by the Democratic party; and to vote for various millages that would maintain/increase funding for education, recycling and provide county-wide health care for those in need. Under the auspices of the Jewish institutions he belonged to he helped serve meals at the North End Soup Kitchen on Christmas Day and on Easter Sunday; to assist in the clean up of debris in abandoned homes, which would become habitable for low income persons; and to
participate in the sorting of food packages for the poor at the Eastern Michigan Food Bank.