Who was Mickey?

I have spent many hours thinking about exactly what I want from this blog. Or what I want others to gain from it. I have stated previously that I think we all should be writing our family stories. I am doing that. One of the things I have decided to do on this blog, is not necessarily write or publish the story here, but to record some of the steps I took to find facts for the story and discuss what other steps need to be taken in order to find as much information as I can to write the story. Maybe I will even get comments from others about areas I haven't investigated and need to think about.

So, "Who was Mickey?"  He was a child born to Dorothy Marie Bruner, before her marriage to my Uncle Garth Beckington (see Garth's story as one of Garth and Edna Beckington's children in a previous post). Mickey was born out-of-wedlock. No one knows much about him and, certainly, no one knows for sure who his father was. His name was Michael Bruner. In talking with a few cousins and my sister, to get what information I could, the name was always Mickey.  No one knew that Michael was his actual name and there was no middle name. They did not know his birth or death dates or where he was buried. The initial facts were: his name was Mickey, he had died of polio, he was about 11 years old and died somewhere between 1946-49.

First, I researched his mother and her family, Dorothy Marie Bruner. Dorothy was the daughter of Roy H. Bruner and his wife, Alice Marenger. Roy and Alice married on August 14, 1915 in Escanaba, Michigan, in Delta County. This is in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  In other words, they were "uppers" (pronounced Yuppers - for you non-Michiganders out there - just had to get that in (grin)).  Anyway, Roy and Alice, first had a son, Renold, in 1916, who died on March 18, 1917. Then Iris was born in 1917. I do not know much about Iris. I don't know if she ever married. I have a query out for additional information about her. I will write about it later, if I find anything interesting. She is on the 1920 and 1930 censuses with her parents and sister. I did find an Iris Coultes in the Benton Township, Cheboygan, Michigan area, who died in 1994. Could this be Dorothy's sister? Dorothy was living in that area when she died on July 29, 1996. She and my uncle had been separated for years, but I am not sure they were legally divorced. Roy and Alice eventually divorced. Roy died in l962 and Alice died in 1985.

One cousin had several obituaries that her mother had saved over the years, and included was one for Mickey. She was kind enough to scan and send me a copy. There was no date on the newspaper. Obituaries can be very informative. This one was. It gave his birth date as September 24, 1936. A piece of information I did not know! The headline of the obituary reads: "County's First Polio Fatality in '46 Reported."  He had "bulbar polio, a virulent form attacking the spinal cord." They did not know where he got it as no other cases had shown up in the area. He died at the University Hospital in Ann Arbor. Because of the nature of his illness, friends were requested not to attend his lying in at the funeral home. He was buried at St. Thomas Cemetery in Ann Arbor. Dorothy may have been Catholic, the Beckingtons are not. I was able to take this information and call the office for the cemetery in Ann Arbor. A kind gentleman called me back with further information I did not have. Michael was buried as "Son, Michael R. Bruner" and in addition to the birth date, his death date was given as August 28, 1946. A single grave site was purchased, so he is not buried with any other family members. Also, according to the obit, Mickey was a student at the Bach School in Ann Arbor and was in a Cub Scout troop. His parents had moved from Ann Arbor to Ypsilanti about six months previous. He probably hadn't started school in Ypsilanti since moving. They lived at 413 W. Forest Avenue in Ypsilanti at the time of his death. He had been ill for three days when he died.

Poor little guy: no one knew his name, no one knows his father, no one knew exactly how old he was when he died, and he is buried all by himself. More on this boy later.