Michael James Frizzell
Paris, France – How do you write an obituary for a man who could change the very atmosphere of a room with his laughter, who could effortlessly break into a Sinatra song or play the flute like a virtuoso? A man who didn’t just meet people, but touched their souls, offering a piece of his own in return. A man who, no matter what life threw his way, was always able to reinvent himself without ever losing his sense of wonder. How do you capture the essence of Michael James Frizzell in mere words? It may be an impossible task, but his story deserves to be told.
Mike Frizzell, writer, surfer, baseball player, photographer, and decorated Marine who did two tours of duty in Vietnam and later became an international climate diplomat, died September 18, 2024, in Santa Barbara, California of a suspected heart attack.
Mike was born December 4, 1948, in Los Angeles to Antoinette (Filippini) and Walter Frizzell. He attended Saint Genevieve’s High School in Van Nuys, where he was an outstanding baseball player scouted by the pros. He played little league baseball with actor Kurt Russell, and Kurt’s father, Bing, was their coach. Instead of baseball, at 17 Mike enlisted in the Marines, with parental permission, and saw some of the fiercest fighting, including in Hue City during the Tet Offensive in 1968, where he was awarded a Purple Heart. After volunteering for a second tour of duty, he returned to the United States in 1970, at a time when returning members of the military were shunned and shamed by student protesters who believed the war was immoral and illegal.
Mike studied at UCLA and later managed a bar in La Jolla. He also was a bartender in Carpinteria, a counselor at a junior high school, and a builder of tennis courts throughout Southern California. Occasionally he was also a salesman. He struggled with post traumatic stress, and regularly shared his experience with other veterans. Mike was married three times.
“A warm-hearted and genuine spirit, he brought joy and laughter to all, always seeing the good in others, even after experiencing the darkness of war at a very young age,” said colleague Ms. Romina Picolotti, former Minister of Environment from Argentina. Mohamed Rida Derder, a Moroccan colleague, added “If you met Mike, you wanted to be his friend, and even more, you wanted him to be your friend. During one of his visits to Morocco, Mike gave a lecture about peace in a small-town high school, where he enlightened the young students with love and stayed in touch with them.” Mike was the godfather of Derder’s son, Mohamed Ali.
Mike briefly studied acting and appeared in an Andy Garcia film with Fred Asparagus. He was a talented musician who played piano, flute, and guitar. He also had a wonderful singing voice. He was a natural storyteller who could captivate an audience, as he did as a lecturer at the University of California, Santa Barbara in the celebrated course originally created by Professor Walter Capps on The Impact of the Vietnam War on American Religion and Culture. Mike lectured twice to a full auditorium about his war experiences, the challenges of coming home, and his evolution as a veteran against the war. He also talked about his time in jail for selling a now legal drug. He made friends with his fellow prisoners, as well as with the sheriff who ran the jail. In the evenings, Mike would entertain them all by reading Charles Bukowski stories.
At his university lectures, Mike was introduced as “the world’s most interesting man,” a tag line popularized by Dos Equis commercials that noted “His charm is so contagious, vaccines have been created for it” and ended with “Stay thirsty my friend,” a line Mike liked to repeat. One participant at Mike’s lectures, Sandra Castellino, a housemate and friend, said no student in the room had their cell phone open, and there was an unusually long line of students who wanted to speak with him after the lecture. “Mike not only stayed as long as the students wanted to talk, he offered to meet them at a coffee shop later and did so with many of them individually,” she added. “They were hungry for authenticity, something Mike had in abundance.”
Mike was a devoted father to his daughter, Madelyn, nicknamed “the Mad Lion,” who inherited his gift of laughter and infectious smile, and a stepson, Rio Acord. Growing up, Mike was a fierce protector of his younger brothers, Greg and Walter, who both predeceased him.
In the early 1980’s Mike went north to Alaska to work with the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, where he was a special envoy to the Tlingit village of Angoon on Admiralty Island. He worked under the guidance of the director of the Alaska office, Durwood Zaelke, a lifelong friend. Zaelke later recruited Mike to assist with conferences in Costa Rica, Cape Town, Vancouver, and Marrakech for an international network of 2,000 environmental enforcement officials from 150 countries that Zaelke directed. Mike later joined the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development, an international think tank Zaelke founded in Washington, D.C. and Paris.
Mike became an effective climate diplomat over the past two decades. “He earned the trust of other climate negotiators instantly and was able to open their minds to the evidence showing the need for deeper and faster climate action,” said Maxime Beaugrand, a French climate negotiator and colleague. She added that “Mike also helped steady our team with his humor and humanity.”
In addition to his published story, “Give Yourself Permission to Be Sober,” Mike was working on other stories for a collection with the apt title “Places I’ve Done Time.” In a story called “Big Daddy”— that’s what the Black Marines in his platoon called him — Mike told of going home on emergency leave when his infant half-brother died. He wrote:
“We landed in Danang and they had my orders for me as soon as I got off the plane. They told me I was to take the Air Force C141 transport sitting on the runway in the distance on the tarmac. “Hurry Marine!” someone yelled.
“I made my way over to the huge Air Force jet. I stood next to where I thought I would be climbing aboard. The pilot or co-pilot came over. I saluted. He had two blankets in his possession and gave them to me. ” What are these for?”, I said. It was over a hundred degrees on the tarmac. “You’ll see Marine.”
“I climbed aboard and saw what he meant. Metal boxes filled the cargo area. Rows of metal caskets, stacked two high. I was leaving Vietnam with the dead. The brutality and sadness of war was in front of me. The blankets were to keep me warm. They had to cool down the plane to preserve the bodies for the ride home. I walked the rows of caskets looking at the names and saw that some of the dead Marines had just joined. You can tell with their Service Numbers. The other branches used numbers I didn’t understand.
“I sat and buckled up as we taxied for takeoff. These caskets were going home to mothers, fathers, wives, brothers and sisters. Their lives never to be the same. I was going home to see the small casket before it was lowered into the ground. My mother thinking that God had punished her for leaving her three boys and then having another child with another husband.
I wrapped the blankets around me like a shroud. I started to cry as we lifted off. We were all leaving Hell, and going home. Hopefully most of us would be joining my brother in Heaven. He was probably the only one of us with a clean soul.”
Mike was also working on a novel. He imagined going on a book tour one day starting at Shakespeare & Co., a bookstore he often visited when working out of his office in Paris, a city that he loved. His favorite cafes there included the St. Regis Café near his office on Île St. Louis, a small island in the middle of the Seine, La Perla in the Marais, and Café Les Deux Magots in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, once frequented by Ernest Hemingway, Simone de Beauvoir, and other literary giants.
Mike overcame the challenges of a tough childhood, a traumatic war, and a long and thirsty return to civilian life. Through it all, he managed to bring empathy, optimism, and humor to all who knew him.
He burned the candle bright at both ends during his adventurous life. He agreed with Hunter S. Thompson that “life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming ‘Wow! What a ride!’”
“Mike had one hell of a ride,” Zaelke said, “and we will forever hear the echo of his laughing voice yelling ‘Wow!’” Zaelke is collecting Mike’s stories with the goal of publishing them. Mike’s friend, musician Michael McDonald, has volunteered to record a couple of the stories as a tribute.
A celebration of Mike’s life will be held December 7th in Montecito. Contact zaelke@igsd.org for details. Contributions in Mike’s memory can be made to the Maasai Girls Education Fund, an organization founded by his friend, Barbara Lee Shaw.