Michael Symons

Michael Symons, a gentle man who was a fierce fighter for social justice his entire life, died on October 27, 2026 at his home in Great Barrington, MA. He was 90.

Michael was born in Brooklyn, NY, on April 10, 1936, the youngest child of Louis and Selma Symons. His paternal grandparents had immigrated to the US from outside Warsaw, Poland; his maternal grandparents from a small village in Ukraine.

Growing up in East Flatbush, Michael had a classic Brooklyn childhood of the 1940s: stickball in the school yard at P.S. 208; baseball at the Parade Grounds next to Prospect Park (where he played against a teenage Sandy Koufax); rooting for his beloved Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field (where he saw Jackie Robinson’s major league debut); and hanging out with a gang of neighborhood friends with colorful nicknames like Donny the Schnozz, Gooch Fishman, Juney Scanio, Lil’ A, and Sydney the Kidney.

Michael loved to recall his teenage adventures with friends in those safer, more carefree days: taking the subway to northern Manhattan and hiking across the George Washington Bridge to camp in Palisades State Park; riding his bike to Rockaway and renting a small rowboat to take into Jamaica Bay, where he almost got swept to sea when the wind and waves kicked up; hitchhiking to Montauk and sleeping on the beach.

Michael graduated Tilden High School, where he liked to joke that he once held the fastest time in the 25 yard swim. The only problem, he would add, was that the shortest event was 50 yards.

From there, it was on to Brooklyn College, just two miles from his home on East 48th Street. By his own admission, it was in college that Michael blossomed. He majored in English and joined the folk song club, where he met his future wife, Arlene. She had been a musical prodigy, playing piano on the radio at four years old and winning a contest as the best high school musician in the city her senior year. “He wasn’t much of a guitar player, but he had a big personality and was charismatic - the whole room was captivated by him. I fell in love immediately,” she used to say.

With little money, Michael would laugh about his courtship of Arlene and their “cheap dates,” which often included riding the Staten Island Ferry back and forth across New York Harbor for five cents each way. “Nothing compared to the ferry for romance,” he wrote. “We would stand at the railing as the ferry pulled into Manhattan with a view of the skyline. We kissed and hugged and kissed and hugged so many times.”

They married in 1957 when Michael graduated and Arlene was just 19 and still in college. Their world was small and familiar. They set up house in an apartment close to campus. Michael got a Master’s Degree in Education and began what was to become a 38-year career in the New York City public schools, first teaching middle school English and later, working as a guidance counselor and faculty supervisor in Special Education.

His first teaching job was in the underserved Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, which made a lasting impression on him. “I was inspired by many of my students who had very little and yet so many of them rose above their circumstances to lead successful lives,” he wrote. Early on in his career, a young girl brought in an absence note from her mother: “Mr. Symons. Alice didn’t go to school last week because she had no shoes.” Michael kept that handwritten note in his wallet for the rest of his life.

Michael was a passionate union man, an organizer of the United Federation of Teachers during the contentious politics of the 1960s. It was an intense time in the city with racial unrest, a city-wide teachers’ strike in 1968, and the fiscal crisis of the early 1970s. Michael was laid off more than once, only to be hired back each time. His support for union organizing and recognition never wavered.

To make ends meet on two teachers’ salaries, Michael and Arlene worked every year at a series of progressive, interracial summer camps; first at the Educational Alliance camp, followed by 20 years at Camp Trywoodie in Hyde Park, NY where he made lifelong friends from around the world whom he still corresponded with 40 years later.

It was at camp in August 1963, that Michael boarded a school bus in the middle of the night with a group of adult campers to make the long journey to The March On Washington, where he saw Martin Luther King, Jr., give his “I Have A Dream” speech. “One could feel the electricity in the air as we were organized into groups of marchers, linking arms, and getting ready to march to the Lincoln Memorial,” he wrote. He called it one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen.

Just a few months earlier, Michael and Arlene had started their family: Jonathan arrived in 1963 and Joseph in 1967. At the arrival of his first child, “I was ecstatic and had so much energy that I walked (11 miles) from the hospital in Manhattan back to Brooklyn, crossing over the Brooklyn Bridge in the predawn hours and arriving home as the sun rose,” he remembered

Michael’s mother, Selma, was a huge influence on him. She too had worked at a summer camp to get her children out of the city during a polio scare in the 1940s. She continued working at that same camp for four more decades. Even into her 80s, she rode the bus to take adult education classes at Brooklyn College. She lived to be 98 in the same house in which she raised her family. Michael remembered that his mother was innately curious and non-judgemental about people from all walks of life, a gift she passed on to her son.

A city boy by birth, Michael’s camp experiences sparked a love of the country. In 1970, he and Arlene bought a tiny cottage in Woodstock, NY, where they enjoyed many years of exploring the backroads of the Catskills and hosting friends. Saturday mornings were spent circling the yard sale ads in the local paper and getting an early start to find some hidden treasure before it was gone. Each year, Michael would host his own yard sale. He didn’t make much money because he would often give away an item if he just liked the person. Young children left his yard sales with a favorite toy after “bargaining” with Michael, who would insist on payment of a penny or a nickel. A yard sale was never about the money; it was about community.

In 2000, Michael and Arlene moved to the Berkshires, first to Otis and then to Great Barrington, where they found a rich community of new friends. They loved nothing more than sitting on the lawn at Tanglewood on a soft summer night or hosting their three grandchildren, who they lived to see become adults. Michael was in as many as three poker games a week and served as a hospice volunteer for 20 years. At age 90, he was still protesting for a fair and just society. He and Arlene never ceased to be amazed at how far they had come from their small neighborhood in Brooklyn.

Michael and Arlene were married 65 years before she died in 2023. And Michael was lucky enough to find love a second time with Elizabeth Young, his partner until the end. They shared a happy life of mutual friends, books, theater, low-stakes poker, and loving family.

Those who met Michael were instantly charmed by him. He was guileless; always curious about who you were and where you came from. If you were a server, a tradesperson, a bank teller, a postal worker, or a librarian, Michael wanted to know your story. He loved to laugh and he loved to hug. “I’m a hugger,” he would tell people. He was, as they say in Yiddish, a “mensch” - a person of high integrity and deep moral character. He left a lasting impression on anyone who met him. And he left the world a better place.

Michael was pre-deceased by his wife Arlene, his sister Sonya and brother Barry. He is survived by his son Jon and wife Suzy; Joe and partner Nick Dimov; grandchildren Caleb, Hannah, and Sarah Symons; and his partner Elizabeth Young.

A funeral service will take place at 1:00 pm on November 2, 2026 at Finnerty & Stevens Funeral Home, 426 Main Street, Great Barrington, MA.

Donations in Michael’s memory can be made to HospiceCare In The Berkshires.