by Richard Hill
Barb and Lorraine were teenagers when their father, Bill, began his affair with Jackie’s mother, Marion. They lived outside Detroit in Livonia Township and went to Plymouth High School. Lorraine, the older one, was the same age as Jackie’s younger sister, Joyce, and rode the school bus with her.
The Hartzell girls had moved into the area and lived in a small rental house on Plymouth Road near Stark Street.
At the time Jackie and Joyce died, their older sister, Marilyn, was already married and had a family. For the younger girls, death occurred when a Jeep they were riding in rolled over after leaving Cavalcade Inn, a bar owned by the driver. It had been a popular spot on Northville Road near Phoenix Lake.
I pushed a little to see if Barb or Lorraine might tell me the name of my suspected father. No dice. So I shared the non-identifying data the court had provided about my birth father. Other than being a Protestant, they both said nothing else matched. The man they were protecting could not be the man described in my file.
11
ELEANOR
Once she got going, it did not take Jeanette long to identify my brother. It was still December 1981 and she called me on a Monday night with a progress report.
Looking at the seven Bojanzyks in the Detroit phone directory, she had started with Eugene. His wife answered and confirmed that Leonard was a cousin. Married several times, Leonard now lived in California. He did have two brothers in the Detroit area: Joseph and Richard.
Joseph’s number was unlisted, so Jeanette called Richard. He didn’t know where in California Leonard lived and didn’t care, calling him a “pain in the ass.” He didn’t have anything good to say about Joseph, either.
Continuing the conversation, Jeanette learned that the men’s mother had died three years earlier and the entire family had been embroiled in a battle over her estate. They had settled it the previous Friday, so the wounds were still fresh.
Richard mentioned that Leonard had a son. Raised by his grandparents, this nephew of Richard’s was more like a kid brother. His name was Michael.
As Jeanette told me this, I paused to reflect on the name I finally heard for the first time at age thirty-five: Michael Bojanzyk. This was my brother.
When Jeanette told Richard about me and the purpose of her call, he did not believe her. He had never even heard that Leonard and Jackie had been divorced. And he certainly did not believe that Jackie had another son.
Richard admitted that he was only twelve years old when his older brother’s wife died and he could have been shielded from such adult matters. But if Jackie had another son, he reasoned, someone would surely have mentioned it when he was older. Jeanette left her name and phone number with Richard and then called me.
Although Michael’s number was in the phone book, Jeanette insisted that we not contact him directly until we found someone in the family to confirm my story. Fortunately, that did not take long.
Two nights later, I was getting ready for bed when the phone rang. It was Jeanette again and she was excited. After thinking about her peculiar call, Richard contacted a previously unmentioned sister.
That sister, Eleanor, knew about Jackie’s second baby.
After filling Richard in on the story that he had been too young to hear, Eleanor called Jeanette. She had always wondered what happened to Jackie’s second child. Quite excited, she wanted me to call her right away. It didn’t matter how late it was. Eleanor would wait up for my call.
With my own excitement growing, I finished my conversation with Jeanette and dialed Eleanor’s number. She answered right away and we talked for nearly an hour.
Jackie had been Eleanor’s best friend in high school and someone she fondly remembered as “a beautiful person.” Eleanor described Jackie as short with a small nose, freckles, and blue eyes.
The two of them were classmates at Plymouth High School until Jackie quit school at age sixteen to marry Eleanor’s brother, Leonard. Jackie and Leonard’s son, Michael, was born in October 1943 when Jackie was seventeen.
“Leonard was a lousy brother and a worse husband,” Eleanor exclaimed. “He treated Jackie badly and I helped her leave him in December 1944.”
Jackie and Michael moved in with her mother, Marion, and Jackie found a job. Her mother worked a different schedule so they had a plan for the baby’s care. But Marion proved to be an unreliable sitter.
“Marion liked her drinks,” Eleanor explained.
With no other options, Jackie decided to entrust her baby to Mrs. Bojanzyk, Leonard’s mother. It was to be a temporary arrangement until Jackie could save enough money to support her son.
I told Eleanor how Marion’s connection to Bill French had led to my adoption in Lansing. Eleanor had gone to school with Lorraine French and knew about Marion’s long-running affair with Bill.
Eleanor had learned about me when a letter came to the Bojanzyk home notifying Leonard that Jackie had given birth and put the baby up for adoption. Since Jackie got pregnant before the divorce was final, Leonard was legally my father and the court had to notify him of the adoption.
Eleanor was certain, however, that Leonard was not my biological father. Once Jackie left him, he moved to the other side of town and they had nothing to do with each other. So Michael and I were surely half brothers.
After dropping Michael off at the Bojanzyk home, Jackie began to run around with a crowd from Northville, a town just north of Plymouth. Eleanor had heard that Jackie was involved with the guy who owned the bar where she worked.
Remembering what Barb and Lorraine had told me about the fatal Jeep accident, I questioned Eleanor.
“Was that the guy from Cavalcade Inn?”
“Yes, I think so,” she said. “I can’t remember the guy’s name. But I do remember the owner of Cavalcade Inn had been driving under the influence of alcohol and was responsible for Jackie’s death.”
“Years later,” she continued, “The guy did it again and killed two more people in another accident.”
I had a distressing thought. What if my biological father was the man who caused my birth mother’s death and then went on to kill more people? I prayed that my father was someone else. Anyone else.
Eleanor went on to say that the sudden death of Jackie and Joyce had been big news. Plymouth and Northville were small towns and both girls were popular and well liked. Plus, both were young parents. In Joyce’s case, she left behind a little girl.
When asked, Eleanor placed the date of the accident as June 1947. I did the math. Jackie died just thirteen months after I was born. She was only twenty-one.
Eleanor vividly remembered the funeral at the Schrader Funeral Home in Plymouth.
“The girls are buried in Grand Lawn Cemetery near Redford,” she continued.
We then turned our discussion to Michael—or Mike, as most people called him now. Mike was divorced and his nine-year-old daughter lived with his ex-wife.
Eleanor promised to call Mike the next day and have him call me. With all this news to absorb and the anticipation of speaking to my brother, I had a hard time sleeping that night.
12
MICHAEL
The next evening I received the call I had been looking forward to ever since I started my search.
“This is Mike Bojanzyk,” the caller said. “I understand we may be brothers.”
Mike’s attitude was friendly enough. But I could tell he was shell-shocked. He explained that his Uncle Richard called first and told him about me. Then he got a second call from his Aunt Eleanor.
Eleanor claimed she had told him about Jackie’s second baby when his grandmother died three years earlier. But he did not remember the conversation. There had been a lot of wrangling over the grandmother’s estate and that had weighed heavily on his mind for a long time.
Today’s conversation with Eleanor had challenged much of what Mike thought was his personal history. He knew that he had come to live with his grandparents when he was about eighteen months old. But he had always assumed that
was a direct result of his mother’s sudden death.
Mike was stunned to learn that Jackie lived another two years after he arrived at his grandmother’s home. When he told me that, I realized that my family wasn’t the only one to keep secrets from its children.
In her call, Eleanor told Mike that she had taken him to see his mother once. But he could not remember it, of course. He was not yet four years old when Jackie died.
In addition to having no memories of his mother, Mike had few good memories of his father. Leonard remarried and had other children. For brief periods, Mike had moved in with his father and stepmother. But it never worked out well and Mike always ended up back with his grandmother.
In more recent years, Leonard had lived in California. He only called his son when he wanted something, usually to borrow money. The extended fight over the family estate had been the final blow to their strained relationship and Mike had written off his father completely.
I shared what I knew about Jackie coming to Lansing during her second pregnancy and living with my adoptive parents. I told him how I had grown up in Ionia, about two hours west of him. Then I explained how a doctor had revealed my adoption and how my father later told me I had a brother.
While I was excited enough to talk all night, I could tell that Mike needed time just to absorb the basic facts surrounding our relationship. I had known about him for almost four years. But he had only known about me for a few hours. We agreed to talk again soon and ended the call.
After hanging up with Mike, I immediately called his aunt, Eleanor. She told me she had been so excited from our conversation the night before that she had not gone to bed until 4 a.m.
Because of the letter the Probate Court had sent to her brother, Leonard, regarding my adoption, Eleanor had known about me most of my life. Her conversation with Jeanette had ended three decades of speculation.
A few years ago, she had even thought about trying to find me. But she had no idea how to get started. All she knew was that Jackie had given up a baby boy for adoption in Ingham County.
Eleanor remembered that Jackie had adored Leonard’s little brother, Richard. She wondered if Jackie might have suggested the name to my adoptive parents. Since no one else in my adoptive family carried the name Richard, I thought she might be right.
Eleanor told me that Leonard had gone into the service while Jackie was pregnant with Mike, but he managed to get an early discharge.
Then, when Mike was still a baby, Leonard would disappear for two or three days at a time, sometimes leaving his wife and child in the house with no food. That was why, when Jackie decided to leave him, Eleanor had helped her move out.
According to Eleanor, Jackie changed once she was free of her abusive husband and Mike was safely tucked away at his grandmother’s home.
In the two years between dropping Mike off with Eleanor’s mother and her death in the accident, Jackie only tried to visit Mike once. On that occasion, she stopped by the Bojanzyk home with two other girls and three guys.
“All of them had obviously been drinking,” Eleanor explained. “Because of that, my mother and I would not let Jackie come in to see Mike.”
Eleanor assured me that Jackie would have been welcome otherwise. But she never came back.
I had wondered earlier if Jackie ever thought about finding me. After hearing this, I figured I knew the answer to that question.
We ended that call, but Eleanor called me back the following night. Mike had filled her in on his conversation with me. He was still struggling with all the unexpected news about our mother and me.
Since Mike was not close to his dad or his dad’s other kids, he would welcome a good relationship with me. But having been hurt so many times by his family, he was afraid of being hurt again. Eleanor encouraged me to call Mike again on Saturday.
I did as she suggested and Mike and I had our second phone conversation. He seemed more relaxed this time and we filled each other in on the separate lives we had lived to this point.
Mike owned a home in a Detroit suburb. He had gone to college at Eastern Michigan University. Ever since graduation, he had been a physical education teacher in an elementary school.
His daughter would be ten in October. She lived in Ohio with his ex-wife, but she would be up to see him for Christmas. Mike had a girlfriend that he had been dating for five years. She was also divorced and her son lived with her.
Wondering if we had inherited any common maladies, Mike and I compared notes on medical conditions. Both of us were healthy, so there wasn’t much to discuss. But we did find one interesting commonality. Each of us had undergone surgery for a deviated septum to solve sinus problems.
Mike and I then set a date to meet in person at Eleanor’s house after the holidays. We exchanged addresses and promised to send pictures in the meantime. The timing was good, Mike said, because he had just gotten his annual photo package from the school where he worked.
I asked Mike if he had any pictures of himself as a child. Mike explained that all of his childhood photos were in his grandmother’s home, now occupied by his Uncle Joseph. The fact that Joseph got the home was one of the sore points in the estate fight and no one in the family was speaking to him.
We said good-bye and got busy with our own families for the Christmas holidays. I sent Mike a Christmas card and enclosed a few photos of myself. Then I received a card from Mike.
Excitedly, I looked at the enclosed photo and was shocked to see a guy with curly brown hair. My hair is totally straight.
Anticipating my surprise, Mike had thoughtfully written the following note on the card:
“The hair is not naturally curly. I get a perm every three months.”
Saturday, January 9, 1982, was the big day to meet Mike. Pat and I loaded up the kids into our Volvo station wagon and made the two-hour drive to the home of Mike’s Aunt Eleanor in the Detroit suburbs.
People everywhere remember Michigan as the state shaped like a mitten. In reality, this Great Lakes state is more like three separate states that don’t have much to do with each other.
First, there is southeast Michigan, which radiates out to some reasonable commuting distance from Detroit. Secondly, there is the rest of the Lower Peninsula, including the Grand Rapids area where I live and the state capital of Lansing, where I was born.
Lastly, there is the Upper Peninsula, the land above the mitten known for six-foot snow drifts and people who proudly call themselves Yoopers.
Michiganders from outside the Detroit area have little reason to go there. Even though fifteen years had passed since Detroit’s infamous 1967 riot, many people in 1982 were still afraid of our biggest city.
Fortunately, I wasn’t one of them. I had visited Detroit a few times on business. Plus, Pat had an aunt and uncle who lived just outside the city. So we knew the Detroit suburbs could be just as nice and safe as the suburbs of Grand Rapids.
Jenny was eight and seemed to understand that we were going to meet a brother I had never seen. The twins, now three, just accepted the trip as another family outing. As usual, they occupied the rear-facing third seat of our station wagon and waved at the cars behind us.
When we arrived at Eleanor’s house, Mike was not yet there. Eleanor invited us in and introduced us to her husband. As it turned out, he kept our kids entertained for much of the day so the rest of us could get to know each other.
Even though Eleanor was Mike’s aunt, not mine, she was absolutely thrilled to meet me in person. She had known for thirty-five years that her deceased friend, Jackie, had another child out there somewhere. And she was obviously proud of her role in reuniting Jackie’s two children.
Mike arrived a little while later. Our first meeting was nothing like the adoption reunions captured for television. Those people always seem to be a mother and daughter or two sisters. They always hug each other immediately and the tears start to flow.
As grown men, Mike and I simply shook hands.
Our manly reserve did
not change the fact that this was a huge deal for me. Except for my children, this was the first time I ever laid eyes on a blood relative.
Mike looked just like his picture, curly hair and all. He was tall, only an inch shorter than I was. But other than that, I did not see much resemblance. Of course, even full brothers don’t always look alike. And Mike and I only had one parent in common.
Fortunately, Eleanor had one photo of Mike as a young boy. His natural hair back then was just as straight as mine. Everyone agreed that we looked much more alike as children.
Mike brought his longtime girlfriend, an attractive blonde woman who we learned was an aerobics instructor. She was warm and friendly and Pat and I liked her right away.
Everyone wanted to hear my story. How and when did I learn I had a brother? Then, how did I discover it was Mike? After covering that icebreaker topic, Mike and I talked more about our current lives.
I learned that Mike’s bachelor life revolved almost entirely around sports. Depending on the season, he was in leagues for golf, bowling, and softball. In addition to his men’s leagues, he and his girlfriend were in some co-ed leagues. In the winter, they also went downhill skiing.
Mike was an avid fan of all the Detroit pro sports teams. Although he got his degree from Eastern Michigan University, the college whose teams he rooted for was the University of Michigan.
As a fan of Michigan State, I found Mike’s preference for my school’s archrival disheartening. But since he was my brother, I chose to overlook that single flaw in his character.
My sporting life paled in comparison. I used to play golf on rare occasions, but had given it up when life got too busy. Now with three small children, the closest I came to participating in a sport was playing tee-ball or soccer with my kids and their friends in the backyard.
Expecting our common genes to result in common interests, I was a little disappointed.
At the end of the day, Mike and I posed for pictures together. I could tell Mike was still a little reserved about me. But I was optimistic that we would grow closer as time went on and we got a chance to know each other better.