Mitch Evich – Class of 1984 (1961-2021)

Mitch Evich, class of 1984, died on Christmas morning 2021 due to complications from Alzheimer’s, six and a half years after being diagnosed with young-onset Alzheimer’s in 2015.

He had been a reporter and the associate editor at the Massachusetts Municipal Association in Boston since 2003. He earned a master’s degree in English literature from Northeastern University in Boston, and taught writing as an adjunct lecturer for several years. That experience informed his novel “The Clandestine Novelist,” published in 2003. Mitch also published a book of autobiographical essays about growing up in Bellingham, titled “A Geography of Peril.”

After his diagnosis, Mitch wrote a blog about Alzheimer’s and his own experience with dementia, called “A Diminishing Window,” which he completed in spring 2019. Also during his early retirement, he revised and eventually published the first novel he’d written, “The Destiny of Salmon,” which drew from his experience fishing in Alaska.