Remembering Michael Camilleri

by Richard Donohue

Town Historian

(Editor’s note: This is part two of a two-part series).

As Michael Camilleri was approaching graduation from Trinity College, he was reluctant to enter law school and considered getting a master’s in business instead. He attended a career fair at Trinity and, after speaking with a judge for several hours, left the fair with a recommendation for UConn Law.

Michael, Terri, Jessica and Megan. Out of everything Michael did, he was most proud of his family.

He took a job as an assistant at a small law firm and began course work in the UConn Law Evening Division. He graduated fur years later with honors, an achievement he knew nothing about until he received his diploma in the mail.

Despite the rigorous nightly schedule of two-hour classes, Michael made a lifelong friend in law school named Michael Kozlik. The two “Mikes” met on their first day and took every class together for the next four years.

When they graduated, neither was sure they wanted to practice law and Kozlik took a job working for Brown Rudnik in Hartford. Nine months later the firm was looking for a first-year real estate associate and Kozlik put his friend’s name forward.

On the day Camilleri arrived to interview for the position, he stopped into Kozlik’s office first with his jacket pulled off his shoulder by his messenger bag and his tie askew. Kozlik straightened his friend’s attire and then sent him in to meet the partners, the kind of vigilance the pair would provide each other as friends and colleagues for decades.

Michael began work at Brown Rudnik in July 2001 specializing in commercial real estate. He began to manage deals with high-profile clients such as Lowe’s Home Improvement, one of which brought the store to his own community of Cromwell in 2009.

After 11 years he was moved to leave the excitement of his office on the top floor of City Place in Hartford to find his life’s vocation as the head of ethics and compliance at Pratt & Whitney Aircraft. He joined the company in July 2012 as the single member of the department and over the next decade created a network of 30 global compliance officers.

Michael Kozlik, who also moved to Pratt & Whitney, remembered Michael Camilleri as “the rabbi of the Pratt legal department … if someone brought him an issue, they never questioned his decision.”

Michael Camilleri’s love of reading began when he started reading the newspaper at the age of 5.

In 1998, Michael and Terri Camilleri moved to Cromwell to begin the next phase of their lives as parents. They had three daughters: Elizabeth, Megan and Jessica. Elizabeth did not survive her birth, but she remained ever present in the lives of the entire family and inspired Michael to treasure his children above all things.

Michael was a master of the work/life balance and no matter how busy he was he always took time to be with his family. He spent hours playing and making up voices for Barbies with Jessica and building LEGOs with Megan, even though he often got caught up in reading the directions.

As the girls got older, he took them out separately for breakfast before school or to Dairy Queen on school nights just to talk about whatever was on their minds, and to gossip.

As an adult, his propensity for being involved transfigured into a mantra of noblesse oblige – those who have much are obliged to give. He became involved in town government, sitting on the sewer and fire commissions and running two installments of the Charter Revision Committee.

In 2009, his passion for the advancement of children led Michael to join the Board of Education and become its chairman two years later. For nearly a decade, he led the board with unwavering dedication, commitment and an ability to solve problems with what his successor Celina Kelleher called “an uncanny ability to always say the right thing.”

In August of 2021, Michael began the last great project of his life when he discovered that his recent health issues were caused by a neuroendocrine tumor on his liver. Determined to “die with it rather than of it,” Michael, with Terri at his side, set out to learn everything there was to know about this rare form of cancer and fight “with the same drive he had for everything he ever did.”

He learned so much about the disease that one of his doctors commented that “Michael taught us things the books didn’t.” Despite the realization that this was ultimately a fight he could not win, he never gave up hope. As his daughter Jessica recalled, he never despaired or stopped doing all he could for those he loved, “even when his body betrayed him to the highest level.”

Michael with his daughters Megan and Jessica. No matter how involved he was in the world, he always found plenty of time to spend with his treasured family.

Michael passed quietly on Jan. 13, 2022. His funeral was held by invitation only due to the COVID-19 pandemic but hundreds of mourners passed through the Brooklawn Funeral Home to pay their respects the night before. Many left with an unprecedented understanding of the profound impact Michael had had on so many lives.

In the coming weeks, thousands of dollars were contributed to a scholarship fund established by the family in his name and Pratt & Whitney dedicated five conference rooms in his honor around the world.

A plaque in each space quotes Michael himself with the advice to “be honest, open and kind. Always. Keep things in perspective – not always easy – but remain hopeful. Speak up, not only to share concerns, but speak up to share your voice, your story. You are not alone. Never be afraid to ask for help; in fact, be accustomed to it.”

Michael Camilleri was my best friend. We met in 2007 when his daughter Megan started piano lessons with me and he followed suit a couple of months later. We called them piano lessons but they really became an excuse to spend a weekly half-hour discussing life, music, literature, history, and most significantly, local politics.

We learned quickly that we not only shared very similar views on all of these subjects but that we had the same belief in the potential of mankind. Lessons became breakfasts and our friendship soon resembled that of Jefferson and Adams, though we would argue which of us was which.

Michael and I were able to speak freely with each other with a level of informed honesty that gave each of us courage to be confident in all of ourselves, not just in the parts that were publicly good or even brilliant. I miss him very much, but the time we had left me prepared to live the rest of my life a better man.

As Cromwell prepares to dedicate the auditorium at the new middle school to Michael Camilleri, I hope this brief history will serve as a reminder of his kindness and humility and his belief in the potential of every student that will ever pass through that space bearing his name.