GREENFIELD — Mike Pyle was a fighter.
In the United States Navy in 1990s, he was stationed for eight months off the coast of Kuwait and Iraq, fighting for his country aboard a battleship, working in air traffic control and manning .50-caliber machine guns.
Twenty years after his service ended, he battled cancer – a disease his doctors say was caused by exposure to toxins during his time overseas — and wrestled with the Veterans Administration to ensure he and other like him got the health care coverage they’d earned.
Every day he fought for something, his friends say. Now, he can finally rest. He’s earned it, they say.
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Click here to purchase photos from this galleryPyle, 47, of Greenfield, died this week, succumbing to the cancer he’s known for years was terminal. And the community that embraced his family time and time again — giving everything from money to well-wishes to get them through the toughest times — is mourning his loss.
Pyle’s story was first told in the Daily Reporter in 2012: A rare form of soft-tissue cancer required his leg to be amputated in 2010, and he found out shortly thereafter that the cancer had returned and was attacking his lungs.
But a backlog of paperwork at the Department of Veterans Affairs left the family in financial trouble, and the Greenfield community stepped up with generous — and often anonymous — donations to help them get by. His battle drew the community’s attention to issues within the VA. Many joined in Pyle’s fight, calling senators and congressmen repeatedly, urging them to give Pyle, his wife, Krysty, and their children, Mallory and Preston, the financial support they deserved.
Ultimately – after three treatment and surgery filled years of waiting — the VA recognized Pyle’s military service in the Persian Gulf War nearly 30 years ago as the reason for his illness and has covered the cost of his medical procedures.
Pyle never thought of himself as the inciter of change for the better, his friends say. He was too humble, they say.
But he was always grateful for his neighbors’ generosity, grateful that he’d inspired others to fight for change.
Now the community has wrapped its arms around the Pyles once again, trying its best to comfort the family in this time of great sorrow.
April Wright-Roberts of Greenfield, a longtime friend of the family, said folks have been dropping off dinners, leaving kind notes of condolence and passing along more monetary donations.
Mike’s death wasn’t a shock, Wright-Roberts said: earlier this year, his doctors told him the cancer had a grip they could no longer loosen and they believed he had just a few months to live. He was hospitalized late last week and placed on a ventilator. He died Sunday.
It was Mike’s wish be buried back in his home state of Virginia, and a celebration of life service is planned there for this week. His family and friends hope to hold a local service at a later date.
In this difficult time, those who knew Mike Pyle best are trying to move forward with the same positivity and strength with which their friend lived his life.
Kent Stansifer met Mike Pyle about five years ago at the Greenfield Home Depot, where Mike was working as greeter – a way to stay busy while his wife and children were off at work and school.
They got to chatting about their shared experience in the military, learning quickly they were stationed at the same naval base at the same time early in their careers and now lived just a few houses from one another.
They got together for a beer the very next day, and their friendship blossomed from there, Stansifer said. They bonded over a mutual love of sports, particularly baseball. They swapped stories of their service, while watching their kids run around the neighborhood.
At his core, Pyle was a family man, Stansifer said. In the last few years of his life, when he knew the cancer was getting worse, as the pain was getting worse, all he wanted, all he ever asked for, was another day with his wife and children, Stansifer said.
No matter how tough those days were, Pyle faced them with a smile, his friends said. His infectious sense of humor overshadowed the physical pain he surely felt, they said.
The Pyles have a sticker of a stick-figure family, showing a mother, father and two children, displayed on a back window of their car. Mike Pyle erased one of the stick-father’s legs, saying the adjustment made it a more accurate representation of his family, Wright-Roberts recalled with a laugh.
And at family parties, he’d often twist his prosthetic leg around, so the sole of his sneaker turned up toward the sky and created a personal countertop to hold his drink, Wright-Roberts said, remember how funny Pyle thought his trick was.
His laugh is a sound Stansifer said he’ll miss every day. It was a unique chuckle, one that seemed to share the same southern drawl of Pyle’s voice. It brought his friends so much joy — just like Pyle did, Stansifer said.
“You don’t meet guys like that very often,” he said.
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Friends of Mike Pyle’s family are organizing fundraisers and meal trains to help his wife, Krysty, and their two children, Mallory and Preston.
T-shirts designed by Impressions, a Greenfield sign company, that proclaim “Pyle Strong” are on sale now on the business’s website, signs46140.com. A portion of the proceeds will go to the Pyles.
Anyone wishing to make a meal or donate money can follow the link www.mealtrain.com/trains/7ln5qm.
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