Mike Schilling
by Mark Wallace
I’m sad to report the passing of Mike Schilling on July 29. Mike was a longtime Santa Venetia resident, living on Roosevelt for 15 years.
I met Mike in the early ‘90s, more than 30 years ago, when we worked at the same software company. Mike was a great friend — funny, thoughtful, patient, kind, curious, and generous — and just plain fun to be around. We carpooled to Oakland, and outside of work we watched countless baseball and basketball games and Super Bowls, played pick-up soccer, and shared Seders. We were both Math majors at Cal, so I could use any math metaphor with Mike and know it would not fall flat. He would entertain himself in long work meetings by working through some ridiculously hard algebra problem on a piece of scratch paper while continuing to engage in conversation. Whenever I was attempting something particularly difficult, I could go to Mike to figure out if I was getting it right, and that was true pretty much regardless of the subject. I was glad to occasionally do the same for him.
I grew up with two older brothers and a younger sister, and I’ve been lucky in life to occasionally add to that set of siblings. Mike was a brother in that way, and he will be greatly missed. Mike is survived by his wife Chung, his older brother Kenneth, and his children Mario, Camille, and Andrew.