What Chris Rigaux Said at Farewell

My Favorite Memories of Uncle Mike

by Chris Rigaux

Mike was a great athlete. His parents sold the Angela house to my parents. But we had a huge basketball court, so Sarah and Barry would often come over to play pickup basketball games or HORSE. Sarah and Barry would practice all year long on their shots, and were rightfully proud of their ability.

One summer when I was around 16, Mike was in town so everyone came over to play some pickup basketball games. We played some three-on-three and HORSE, and no matter what team Mike was on, that team would win. He had sort of a Larry Bird approach to basketball: he would back his defender in, and then he would shoot from a variety of angles. I recall he shot both right-handed hook shots as well as left-handed hook shots, and dominated the games.

At the time, Mike had a ponytail, and I believe he rolled his own cigarettes. After the games, I remember looking at Sarah and Barry, and their faces were flushed, they were hanging their heads, because they had tried so hard and could not beat Mike.

I said to Sarah, “Wow, Mike’s pretty good.”
Sarah said, “It’s all natural talent. He never even plays except when he is here.”

So that made me realize effort and hard work are one thing, but talent is another. One doesn’t cancel out the other.

But the biggest thing I learned from Mike was how to find happiness. We flew out to visit Mike and his family in Santa Ana, Cal., in 1971 or so. Mike had the beautiful strawberry blond wife, the four blond-haired children, the ranch-style house with the swimming pool out back, and the highly paid position as an executive with Xerox Corporation. He had it all.

Then, stunningly, two years later, he chucked it all away. Anything that could not fit into his white station wagon was either sold or given away. He spent the next two years camping in various national parks.

Many of us like to think that we live life on the edge, that we take risks, that we are unafraid of what others think of us. But nobody was like Mike.

Mike of course eventually bought the farm in southern Indiana, then sold in to downsize and run the golf course. But he made the impossible seem possible for all of us.

For me, he was the first person to challenge to idea of the American dream--well-paying job, house, cars, family--as being the end-all of happiness. Up until then, everyone had led me to believe that this was it, this was all there was to living.

I notice Danielle put up a list of books Mike was fond of, but I was wondering which of the Great Books he was most fond of. Eric, Dani, and I, as well as Mike and all his brothers, graduated from the Great Books Program at Notre Dame that was started by my grandfather, Mike’s dad.

I think Mike must have loved Thoreau’s Walden Pond, but also Voltaire’s Candide. Candide was a young man who decided to travel around the world in search of happiness. At the end of his journey, he finally discovers happiness in his own garden at home.

Mike travelled around the world too, to Japan and California and Washington, but in the end, I think he realized happiness was found in his own backyard, in Indiana.