Western professor Michael Grimes will be remembered for the love and dedication he had for his family, research and students.

Grimes, 44, passed away Oct. 14 due to natural causes.

Family, friends, students and colleagues filled Moles Family Funeral Home and Bayview Chapel to honor the late professor Grimes on Wednesday.

Attendees poured out into the hallway and lobby to silently listen to the service over the intercom when seating in the main room reached capacity.

Grimes will be missed by his wife, three children, faculty and students.

“I would like to thank my family and friends for their support,” said his widow Tammy Grimes.

Grimes joined the department in 2000 as a visiting professor and officially joined the staff in 2001.

 “His sense of humor was infectious,” said colleague Joan Stevenson, an anthropology professor at Western. “He had a silly side that everyone adored.”

Stevenson said Grimes expanded the department with his creation of a reproductive ecology and a nutritional anthropology class and contributed to the teaching of anatomy and physiology through the biology department.

He was a popular professo who helped many students plan their degree in anthropology, she said.

“His door was always open to students,” Stevenson said.

He was dedicated to his family and began work earlier this quarter so he could go home a few minutes early and spend more time with his children and wife, Stevenson said.

Stevenson said Grimes was an absolute sweetheart; a wonderful person who was easygoing yet driven.

Stevenson said one of Grimes' papers about the effect protein has in a diet helped her personally—she said reading the article made it clear to her that she needed to eat more protein herself.  

Grimes and Darryl Holman, an anthropology professor at the University of Washington, collaborated in research when they were postdoctoral fellows at Pennsylvania State University in the late 1990s.

This research involved studying the influence culture has on breast-feeding as well as energy loss associated with it.

The research project Grimes was recently co-investigating with Holman and four other professors is a continuation of their previous research, Holman said.

“Mike was a joy to be around,” Holman said. “He had this sort of humble sense of humor. He made himself the butt of a lot of jokes.”

Holman said he remembers they used to play chess together over beer every couple of weeks, and eventually, when they would travel together for conferences regarding their research, Grimes brought a magnetic chess board to play on the plane, Holman said.

He looks fondly on memories of time spent with the Grimes family at their home, he said. Holman described Grimes as a wonderful husband and father.

“He was very dedicated to his family,” Holman said. “He was always doing things with them or for them.”

Holman said he remembered a specific time Grimes made him laugh.

“When I visited him in June, I noticed he had drumsticks in the corner of his office,” Holman said.

He said when he asked Grimes why he had the drumsticks, Grimes answered he had been practicing for the reunion concert of the punk rock band he used to play for starting in the early 1990s, called Liverball.

Holman said Grimes had been practicing in his office without drums, with his headset on.

Liverball’s reunion was on July 16, 2009, in Pittsburg, Pa.

“It was like walking backwards in time,” said Ray Kolcun, one of Grimes’ longtime friends and guitarist for the band.

Kolcun said if something did not go quite right with the band, Grimes always maintained a positive outlook and put a positive spin on it.

“You could be down in your lowest of lows and if you were with Mike for 15 minutes he’d have you laughing,” he said.

He said one night during a show, the band’s bass player fell into Grimes’ drum set and knocked it over, leaving only the stool and snare drum standing.

“Drums and cymbals went everywhere,” he said. “And Mike kept playing…with this giant grin on his face like, ‘this is the greatest thing ever," he said.

He said Grimes’ passing was like losing a family member.

 Western senior Katie Brown said Grimes urged her to pursue a degree in biological anthropology after she finished her degree in cellular and molecular biology fall 2008.
“He was a pretty amazing professor,” she said.

Brown said Grimes made it easy to know exactly what to study for on a test.

He used to bring the actual test to class for the review session to help his students prepare for the specific questions that would be asked, she said.

His funny, sarcastic personality made the classroom experience fun, and she said she enjoyed his conversational teaching style.

Brown has been in four of Grimes’ classes over the last three years, including Ecology of Human Variation this quarter.

She would drop by his office sometimes, even when she was not in his class, and he would be available.  

"He [went] above and beyond for his students," she said.

   
Additional reporting by David Gonzales

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