August in the Mountains and other thoughts

I have been enjoying the coolness of the Colorado mountains this last month, it has been a nice break from the Phoenix heat. I have gotten some genealogy research and writing done. Not as much as I would like, but - it all takes time!

Another note on Mickey (check my November and July posts). I requested his death certificate from Washtenaw County, Michigan, and it should be waiting for me in Phoenix when I return. I am anxious to see what details it might reveal that I don't already know. I suppose there could be "one more note" on Mickey later, depending on what the death certificate reveals.

I did go through letters that I have been saving from various family members to my grandparents. I will be writing about the correspondence between my grandparents (to each other, while they were dating) in a book - hopefully that will come out in the winter/spring. It is a larger undertaking than anticipated.

Among others, I have letters written by Dorothy Bruner Beckington (Mickey's mother) to Garth and Edna Beckington (her new husband's parents), after her marriage to Garth (my uncle Toot). Some of the early letters were written when he was stationed at Fort Atterbury, Indiana, where he was stationed for training during WW II and before he was shipped out to England. She was able to live on the base (or near by) with him after their marriage. They married June 6, 1942. As I wrote about in the previous posts mentioned above, Mickey was her son by a previous relationship. He would have been about six years old when Toot and Dorothy married. I am guessing he stayed with his grandparents, William Gross and Alice Marenger Bruner Gross, Dorothy's mother and step-father, while Toot and Dorothy were in Indiana. At least, I assume. She never mentions him in her letters. Where is he? She doesn't say she misses him, or anything. She always (even in the years to come) addresses her in-laws as "Mr. and Mrs. Beckington."  I don't think any other in-laws in the family did so. She did write many letters to them over the years so I do have to give her credit for staying in touch and keeping them apprised of their lives. But she never mentions Mickey - before or after his death.

At one point I assumed that Toot lived with the boy (and Dorothy) from their marriage until Mickey's death in August, 1946. Actually with WW II intervening and Toot having enlisted (or been drafted?), he was away from the family most of the time between 1942 and the fall of 1945. He made one comment in a letter home that he felt they didn't let the soldiers come home earlier (the war officially ended in Europe in May of 1945) because there were no jobs for the soldiers to return to. Toot spent most of his time during his service in England but he was in France for a short time in 1945 because he describes the destruction he sees all over France, including Paris. So, actually, he probably lived with Mickey (if at all, assuming Mickey did not continue living with his grandparents) for less than a year before Mickey died on August 28, 1946 of polio.