Who was Mickey? - Part II

Back to our Mickey story:  (Part I ran last Friday)

 We have been able to establish Mickey's name/birth and death dates, place of burial and certainly know who his mother was. Who was his father? We will probably never know. His mother was 16 1/2 years old when Mickey was conceived. Family rumors abound. Garth married Dorothy when she had a child, he cared for Mickey very much, and he wanted more children. Dorothy did not. Was it the trauma from the conception, or the birth of Mickey that was the impetus for those feelings? After talking with an older cousin, the best we can assume is that Garth and Dorothy might have met “out on the town” in Ann Arbor. Dorothy and Mickey were living with her mother and step-father when they met. When they married on June 6, 1942, Garth was 32 and Dorothy was 23. His family thought that Garth would be a bachelor the rest of his life. Garth served in WWII. I am not sure of his dates of service and whether he was on furlough when they met or married.

 Dorothy's parents were divorced before she was 10. On the 1930 census for Ann Arbor, Michigan, her mother Alice is married and living with her second husband, William A. Gross; Dorothy and Iris are listed as his step-daughters. I can find no living children for William, from his earlier marriage to Alberta Lein, in 1911. I did find a death certificate from their child, Evelyn Gross. She died at three months of age from pneumonia. She was born eight months after they married. Alberta was 18 and William was 19. They were still together, with no children listed, on the 1920 census for Berrien County, Michigan.

Also living with the Gross family on the 1930 census is a brother of Alice's; Henry, age 24. In searching further for Alice's parents, Theodore and Mary (or Marie) Sovey Marenger, I found they too were divorced when their children were young. I don’t know what happened to Theodore, but Mary remarried three more times: first to Albert King, a man 14 years her senior; then to Michael Shea who was also about 15 years her senior. The Sheas had either two or three boys. After Michael died in 1923, she married a fourth time to a Joseph Yesavich. Joseph died in 1960 and Mary in 1966 in Escanaba. Alice and her siblings, Henry, Marie and Regina spent most of their childhood in Escanaba, Michigan. I did find Marie married Pierce Sweig in 1918 and it appears they had a son, Leonard, in 1921 and a daughter, Carmen, in 1920. I couldn’t find anything further on Henry or Regina. I couldn’t find anything on Carmen after 1920. Leonard (if I found the correct one), died in Florida in 1984. I tried following some of the other family members, but didn’t have a great deal of success.

My conclusions: I am pleased that I found more information on Mickey. I can’t really put a face to him or a personality, because so far no one remembers much about him. One cousin said that Dorothy dressed him like a “little man” (note the picture next to this blog) and that he was very well behaved. I do not know who his father was. Was it a case of rape? Incest? Or was it a stranger? Was it just “getting caught” with a young boyfriend? Did she have a choice of keeping the baby or giving him up for adoption? I hope she kept him because she wanted and loved him. I hope both Dorothy and Garth enjoyed their years with him. I hope he was a happy little boy.

This is Michael R. Bruner, born on September 24, 1936, and who died on August 28, 1946, of that terrible disease, Polio. I did learn from a cousin that they had placed him in an “iron lung” during his last day. Rest in Peace, Mickey.