When did you meet Mickey?
1975
Where did you meet him?
Morningside and Jasper
Memory of Mickey
I think of Mickey as being a ‘quiet presence’. He was not loud or boastful, but just there. In a large group, he would be off on the side listening or talking to someone or playing with a child. Unless you were the one in the corner with him, you may not have noticed him. He did make his opinions known with letters to the editor in the AJC and Pickens Progress.
Andy met Mickey around 1975 while working on the roof of our friends house in Morningside. This was a problem with his acrophobia and he wasn’t seen up high very often.
Morningside years were filled with many different memories:
- Planning and shopping for all night pig roasts in the park with Andy and Bob
- Cooking and preparing the food which involved picking pig eyeballs out of the stew (already shared by Mary Ann Gaunt)
- All night in the park with stories, drinking and breakfast of Moon over Miami
- Helping us insulate and sheetrock our upstairs room
- Andy working on their homes on University and Rock Springs
- Our baby sitting coop with Mickey, the favorite sitter for the kids, especially my son Adam
- Sharon and I going back to school in architecture and nursing with our husbands blessings and support
- Making pasta and sausage with friends at their house
- Many shared meals and a listening ear when needed
After we moved to the farm, we kept up long distance with visits and the annual egg roasts:
- Mickey completely rewired our first old home in Woodland – later discovering the color of the wires were crossed, but everything worked, so we always had a laugh over it
- Their Atlanta home was always open to us and shared with our daughter-in-law, Suzannah, while she was in law school and our son, Micah, while he was working in Atlanta
- Egg roasts involved long distance planning and he and Al along with Sharon and Mary Ann coming early to get everything ready – he was often seen sitting by the fire smoking while everyone hunted eggs
- One particular Egg Roast he took everyone on wild rides in his jeep over the dirt roads – a more boisterous Mickey and the beginning of the award called “6 Flags over Mickey”
- When computers came, he and Ken Cook built and kept computers working at our home and Andy’s Housing Authority office, and he wrote very simple booklets to teach you how to work with the computers
- Later visits to Al and Mary Ann and then Sharon and Mickey in Jasper which prompted our retirement there
Jasper years:
- Mickey in a rocker on the porch or sitting in front of his computers with a cigarette and cup of coffee
- Interacting with my grandchildren whenever they were in town – usually having a toy or project out for them
- BBQ’s at Grandview Lake
- Research and excitement over his work on the Bent Tree project with Don and Bob
- Working at Good Sam with him
- Support in many ways when Andy was sick and after his death – Mickey sat for hours in our driveway awaiting the arrival of a hospital bed from Hospice, so Andy could come home from the hospital
Mickey was there with his medical and counseling skills wherever and whenever needed:
- We were comfortable, as were many others, calling with personal, family or friends issues and getting advice, explanations or referrals for medical, addiction or mental health problems or whatever was bothering you
- Andy was always relieved to talk to Mickey and get complicated things explained in laymen’s terms that he could understand – Abby mentioned in her father’s obituary his skill in “turning complex concepts into memorable vignettes”
Along with his ‘quiet presence’, my memories of Mickey are as a ‘serial hobbyist’, a term that was mentioned in one of his obituaries. With each, he may have started a novice, but delved into it and became expert, then went on to something else. A few of his skills and hobbies were:
- Tailoring
- Sailing
- Building a wooden canoe in his basement – Andy and Bob helping him figure how to get it out
- Astronomy
- Building and finishing out pole barn structures with the 3 old men
- Hand tying fishing flies
- Collecting dulcimers and learning to play
- Decorating his cabin with Inuit art
- Blacksmithing
- Last, and certainly not least, delving into the pharmaceutical industry and drug trials, reanalyzing data, and working with researchers over the world to publish findings
GOODNIGHT MICKEY!
Miss your quiet presence. Would love to know what you, Andy and Al are up to now.
