Northampton, MA – Mike Kirby – writer, activist, citizen journalist, Navy veteran, lifelong learner and freethinker with a quick laugh and a ready helping hand – died at Cooley Dickinson Hospital on August 29, 2026, after a brief illness, age 88.
In his last years, Mike lived happily in downtown Northampton with beloved wife Lu Stone. Despite his low vision, Mike frequently walked independently, red-tipped white cane in hand, visiting his favorite coffee shops, the library or bank, often stopping to chat with people who remembered him from his workplaces in Hamp or his two terms as Northampton’s city councilor for Ward One, 1989-1993. For nearly 30 years, Mike and Lu lived at 17 Summer Street, an old house that afforded Mike and stepson David ongoing opportunities to display their DIY skills. Another cherished place for Mike was Martha’s Vineyard, where just weeks before his death he spent a perfect-weather vacation with Lu and her daughter Victoria.
The son of Philip and Lora Kirby, Michael Anthony Kirby was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, and raised in nearby Milton. After high school there, Mike enrolled at the University of Arizona. He soon dropped out and hitchhiked to San Diego, where he worked in an armaments factory and then joined the U.S. Navy in 1958 – experiences that would profoundly shape his worldview.
Serving as a Navy nuclear weapons specialist at an arms depot in the Nevada desert in the late fifties and early sixties, a young Mike grew alarmed by the lax safety protocols he witnessed and his superiors’ indifference. Classes at a nearby community college and thoughtful readings of anti-nuclear publications, along with reports of nuclear exercises in the Pacific by the U.S., quickened his awareness of the bombs’ capability and his role in their proliferation.
Near the end of an exemplary enlistment, Mike, wearing his white dress uniform, joined an anti-nuclear bomb protest at the offices of the Atomic Energy Commission in Oakland, California. Threatened with a court-martial, he nevertheless was honorably discharged. Perhaps the military was reluctant to create a martyr for a burgeoning peace movement.
Years later he fictionalized his experience at the depot and the crew he worked with in a self-published novella, The Technician, 1981, which included illustrations by acquaintance Peter Laird, who would go on to co-create the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
An older and wiser Mike would reflect on his complex feelings toward the Navy – pride and gratitude for the discipline, training, and sense of purpose it gave him, alarm at what he perceived to be its failings – in a longform essay published in the London Review of Books (July 31, 2014). In 2016, an excerpt was included in War No More: Three Centuries of American Antiwar & Peace Writing, published by The Library of America.
Mike’s political activism and community service took many forms, including the “Save Old Main on Hospital Hill” campaign, Veterans Education Project, Habitat for Humanity, and the Paradise City Forum, where he was a co-founder. In the early 1990s, he organized a tent encampment in Pulaski Park and the occupation of an empty house on the grounds of the state hospital, actions that led to the much-needed homeless shelter, the Grove Street Inn. And when he attended Northampton City Council meetings as a private citizen, Mike Kirby was sure to add his two minutes’ worth at Public Comment time.
Ever curious and questioning authority, Mike created the provocative and popular online blog “Kirby on the Loose”, now archived at Forbes Library. He published two books focusing on Northampton issues: Back Row, Back Ward: The Redevelopment of Northampton State Hospital (2005) and The Rostoff Effect: The Rostoffs and the Hotel Northampton 1986-1994 (1997).
Mike was a proud alum of Hampshire College, graduating with a degree in writing and psychology in 1975. Later, he studied in the University of California, Irvine’s M.F.A. writing program.
In addition to his wife Lu Stone, Mike is survived by his brother James Kirby of Vermont; stepchildren David Stone of Connecticut and Victoria Stone Cole of California, and their respective spouses; and grandchildren George Cole and Beatrice Cole.
The family wishes to thank the superb team on floor three at Cooley Dickinson Hospital that cared for Mike, and the Veterans Administration in Leeds, where its Visual Impairment Services Team, especially Kelli and Chris, provided Mike the support, devices, and education that enabled a legally blind veteran and devoted reader to stay current, be it with the Daily Hampshire Gazette or the Sunday Times, a New Yorker article or a new book from Forbes.
Donations in Mike’s memory may be made to Forbes Library, Perkins School for the Blind, or PBS/NEPM, each of which was important to Mike in his daily life, or a donation of your choice. The family will hold a Celebration of Life in the near future.
Please go to Czelusniakfuneralhome.com for online condolences and tribute book.
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