Established on 01.14.2021 by Todd ’94 and Jennifer ’94 Lee, Dr. Scott ’94 and Kari Anseth, Dr. Peter Schultz ’94 and Darcie DeBoer, and friends of Mitchell McInnis ’95
Mitchell Ray McInnis was born on Sept. 14, 1972, to Verna and Ron McInnis of Great Falls, Mont. He was a precocious, gregarious child, beloved by his parents, who enjoyed fishing with his dad and collecting law enforcement patches among many interests. He was a standout student at Charles M. Russell High School, serving as a class president, homecoming king, valedictorian, Boys State and Boys Nation delegate, and graduated in 1991.
He took his boisterous energy, lively mind, and infectious laughter and friendship to Concordia College in Moorhead, Minn., where he majored in philosophy and made lifelong friends with whom he was a regular (and sometimes exuberant) correspondent. He was an editor and regular columnist for the school newspaper, a prestigious student lecturer, and favorite student of several popular professors. He graduated in 1995, and his journeys beyond Montana and Minnesota began in earnest, where he made friends from all walks and stations of life, which he celebrated routinely in his conversations and writing.
He spent several years in New York City, studying briefly in a graduate program at New York University, writing, and working. He was living there on Sept. 11, 2001, an event that affected him deeply and looms in the background of many of his writings along with the death of his father. In 2004, McInnis published a book of poetry titled “The Missing Shade of Blue.” It included “Charlie's Light,” dedicated to his parents, about the last moments between them before his Dad’s passing.
It begins ...
Spring came early to Montana
that year, gracing everything
with the salmon-pink light
that only Montanans know and
only Charlie Russell could translate.
After New York City, McInnis lived in Portland (Ore.), Bozeman, Wilmington (N.C.), Las Vegas, and eventually Las Cruces, always writing and at times teaching and studying. He completed a Master of Fine Arts in poetry at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington in 2014, and later began graduate studies in rhetoric at the University of New Mexico, Las Cruces. At the end of his life, he was finalizing the manuscript on a second book of poetry.
Dr. Peter Schultz writes of his friend,
“The last time that I saw Mitchell was in Middelburg, the Netherlands, during the final days of October 2019. We were sitting at the downstairs bar of the Hotel De Nieuwe Doelen, a little place along the soothing banks of the canal through Walcheren, enjoying a final beverage before saying our farewells. We’d just finished a conference at the University College Roosevelt where Mitch’s paper, “Anselm Kiefer: Composing in the Asylum of Malignant Memories,” had been the best of the weekend, inspiring both admiration and tears from an international audience. I didn’t know it would be the last time I’d speak to Mitchell – we never know these things – but I knew he’d had a wonderful time, that his work had been received with acclaim, and that the motley crew of artists, historians, and poets who’d gathered that weekend had found in Mitchell a spokesman and a champion. A young Dutchman approached us as we sipped our beers, gave a little bow, then thanked Mitch again for his paper in heavily accented English: ‘It was superb.’
Thinking on Mitchell’s passing now, a year later, one of his favorite quotes – from one of his own heroes, the American novelist and activist, James Baldwin – springs to mind:
It takes strength to remember, it takes another kind of strength to forget, it takes a hero to do both. People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence. The world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget; heroes are rare.
Mitchell wasn’t perfect. Like all of us, he was a flawed being. He was also incredibly sensitive and passionate – especially in regard to what he saw as his own failings. He was often the first to acknowledge that his life and career were not all he’d hoped. And he’d do so on a river of prose so clear it would defy the very truth that it carried. In that sense, Mitchell was the kind of hero he always wished he’d be.”
The M Endowed Scholarship aims to provide recognition and encouragement for students at Concordia College. The Donors’ hope is that future honorees will see this support as both a confirmation of their own individual journeys and as an affirmation that there are fellow travelers in this world who believe in their dreams.
The M Endowed Scholarship is awarded to students of any class with preference given to students who show a genuine interest in, and passion for, philosophy through a major, minor, or enrollment in philosophy courses. Selection may be further based on financial need and/or academic achievement.