School Story:
For our class and our almost self-contained communities, many nearby places were as exotic as foreign countries and sometimes the people who came from them were stranger than real immigrants. So with Mike Stanton who arrived our senior year, tall, hair greased into a spiky ducktail, and a “bring it on” attitude combined with a “come to me baby” look at girls he liked. One of the girls says, “He was regarded as what young girls today refer to as a ‘hottie’; many were the caps set at him.”
Behind the public persona was a kid struggling to become part of something worthwhile. “The first thing I remember in life is driving across the Triboro Bridge with my parents,” he says, although he does not know why that comes first. Whatever the reason it may be symbolic of his growing up which he describes as “bouncing around” among parents, step parents, grandparents and other relatives, in and out of Catholic schools, living in Greenvale, New York City, and Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. In his senior year alone, when he finally came to Sea Cliff, he lived with two foster families, was taken in for a few weeks by Mike Levine’s (’58) parents, lived with a grandmother in the city, and sometimes out of his car. Yet Mike became a big contributor to the basketball, track and cross country teams. “It was a transitional year,” Mike says. “I was living in more than one world and parallel existences all at the same time.”
Several teachers left their mark with Mike. He welcomed Norman Ross’s encouragement in track and says, “I behaved for Mr. Driscoll” our no-nonsense basketball coach and shop teacher who demanded precision in shop and on the court.
After school Mike drifted around until he headed west with a friend whose father offered a job at Lake Tahoe on the California-Nevada border. When the car broke down near the little town of Wells, Nevada Mike took a job there washing dishes in a hotel near the railroad tracks. “I was always crazy about trains so I stayed there.” After seven months he gave his two weeks’ notice and joined the Army in 1958. “All I did in the army was play ball. I knew I was too immature to go to college.” Once again, as with Mr. Driscoll, the discipline worked well for him. Play ball, of course, was not all he did. He had been assigned to transportation and found himself in France, then assigned to a UN operation unloading supply planes in the Congo during one of its many bloody periods. “I never left the airport,” Mike says, “but an Italian crewman went into town and they beheaded him.”
After the Army he was ready for college in Plattsburg, NY where he also played ball until he injured his Achilles tendon in 1964, “the worst year of my life.” He transferred to Fredonia State Teachers College. After graduation he stayed on to teach English and coach cross country for a couple of years.
In 1965 he met “a farmer’s daughter” Kathleen Kahm from Fredonia and they were married after in 1974. Mike already had one son, David, and he and Kathleen added their son Michael to the family in 1976. Asked how she tamed Mike, she joked, “With a whip, I gotta tell you.” David lives in Fredonia and works with the phone company. Michael lives nearby and works as a debt collector.
Mike left teaching to follow his love of railroading. He began as a brakeman on the Amtrak line out of Buffalo to Cleveland and Toledo. Later he became a conductor to finish a 31 year career with Amtrak. During that time he saved and began investing in real estate and began study the paperwork. “I got a little interested in finance and I always wanted to be wealthy.” In 1986 he incorporated his own mortgage company as Valmy Enterprises named for a tiny trailer park and railroad town in Nevada where he and a buddy passed through in the 60s.
Mike’s mortgage company is operates by word of mouth without a website or Internet, and he knows everyone of his clients personally. He reports he has been unscathed by the mortgage “meltdown” that began in 2007. He also consults on property questions for senior citizens. His other pleasures include his love of his native Fredonia area which he says is very much like “a mini California” with playgrounds, parks, a beach, a good library, and recreation summer and winter. His greatest pleasure, however, is his family and helping raise his pre-school granddaughter. For the many classmates who did not have time to know the Mike behind the newcomer to our class, and to the many who doubted he had much of a future, he says, “The best thing to say is I’m a family. I used to be pretty wild in Sea Cliff.” And if there’s any doubt left, “Tell all the kids I’m a multi-millionaire.”
