Columnist L.M. Boyd dies at 79

SEATTLE – Newspaper columnist “Mike Mailway” helped readers figure out everything from how to find free puppies to how much a reader would weigh on Mars. Sometimes he did even more.

When one reader, “Mrs. Arthur J.,” broke her leg, the columnist had a rental company send a free wheelchair so that she could take care of her bedridden husband. When reader “G.B.” wrote in, the columnist gave him a name and phone number to get his friend off “dope.”

During his more than 40 years as “Mike Mailway,” Louis Malcolm Boyd, gave readers a mix of personal assistance, practical advice and random information. Some of his readers loved his column so much that when he tried to retire in 2000, readers sent in boxes of mail asking him to reconsider.

Boyd died Monday at 79 at his Seattle home, said his eldest daughter, Clare Hasler of Winter Park, Fla. Her father had suffered several strokes in recent years, she said.

Boyd was born in Spokane on June 9, 1927, and raised in Chimacum, on the Olympic Peninsula, and in Bremerton.

At 16, during World War II, Boyd lied about his age and joined the Army, where he was a reporter for the Stars and Stripes, Hasler said.

That experience launched a career that included work for ABC Radio in Europe, The New York Post and the San Francisco Chronicle.

When the Seattle Post-Intelligencer hired him in 1963, “Mike Mailway” – a name based on the letters of his telephone number at the newspaper – was born.

The column, Boyd once said, was one where “the reader and I can sit down for a few minutes once a day and create a little small talk.”

Boyd left the P-I a few years later to syndicate the column, using the byline L.M. Boyd in the hundreds of other newspapers where his column was published. But at the P-I he remained Mike Mailway.

With the help of his wife, Patricia, the column grew into a small publishing empire, Crown Syndicate, which eventually offered nearly 20 other columns, features and puzzles.

Boyd’s trivia column ran in The Spokesman-Review until a stroke in 2004 forced him to stop writing the column.

Despite the success, Boyd’s life revolved mostly around his family, Hasler said.

“I think that was because the column was a family business. He put us all to work,” Hasler said. “One way or another, we all had a hand in it.”

It had been, his wife said at the time of his retirement, “a very nice ride.”

Boyd is survived by his wife, two children and six stepchildren. A son, Malcolm Boyd, died about 25 years ago, Hasler said.