Poetry can find the common thread among seemingly unrelated topics. It stitches together parts of the human experience into lyrical linens, so to speak - some short, some long, some rhyming, some not.
Sumter poet Michele Reese sewed together strawberry picking and polymer manufacturing, swim practice and growing up as a person of color, and she did this, this written threading of themes and such, for decades.
She died in her home on July 27. She was born in Texas on Jan. 17, 1973, but grew up in Parkersburg, West Virginia, and moved to Sumter in 2002 for her career at the University of South Carolina Sumter as an English professor.
As a writer, dancer, teacher, mom, coach, Catholic, athlete, Daughter of the American Revolution and advocate for women and minority rights, Reese was unapologetically into what she was into, her opinions seldom left up to interpretation.
She had pride but the good kind of pride and was brilliant, her ex-husband and father to her children, Chuck Wright, said.
"We had a better divorce than some people do marriages," he said. "She could stick a knife in me like nobody else. She called herself spoiled when we first got married because she wasn't necessarily going to bend her personal time for you; you just had to adapt."
Reese would attend as many Grateful Dead concerts as she could whether accompanied by someone or not.
"There wasn't a millimeter of difference between us," Wright said.
The two met at a Grateful Dead concert in 2003. Wright said Reese had gone to the show by herself, and so he and his group of friends "adopted her for the evening."
"She was an odd mix," he said. "She was very much a Dead Head, which is kind of spontaneous, rule-breaker kind of thing, but at the same time, she was also very rule-oriented in her professional life, and I would say she was a little bohemian."
Reese authored the poetry collection "Following Phia," and her poems have been published in the Crack the Spine Literary Magazine, The Oklahoma Review, Poetry Midwest, The Paris Review (50th Anniversary Edition), The Tulane Review and more.
"I've never met someone quite like Michele Reese," her coworker, Ray McManus, said. "She was quirky and fiery, daring and kind, so much like her poetry - unforced and unflinching.
"And she was fun to work with. Whether we worked together with Poetry Out Loud, the Sumter County Poetry Contest or read poetry together at a venue in the Midlands, she was a joy in every sense of the word. I don't think most folks will ever know how hard she worked to make poetry accessible to students or how much of her time she sacrificed just to help others in the community. I was lucky enough to have had a front-row seat for most of it. Michele will be missed terribly. On our campus and in our community. I'm thankful to have known her, as anyone who had the pleasure of knowing her should be. And I'm grateful that we still have her words to keep the memory of her brilliance alive."
Reese is survived by her sons, Julian William Wright and Mitchel Norman Wright Reese. Chuck Wright said Reese was a good mother to their sons, always there for them when they needed it and even sometimes a little helicopter-like, especially when it came to academics.
She was also an animal lover, despite allergies. According to her obituary, her family asks that in lieu of flowers that donations be made to the Sumter SPCA, the South Carolina Center for Oral Narration or any nonprofit organization associated with women's or minority rights.
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