saturday evenings with mr t...

this week mr t discusses our cousin pat m., who passed away in '95. here's mr t...

I miss Pat Mickle. I was at his funeral in fall 1995. He once saved a couple of guys from drowning in Lake Huron in Oscoda around 1967. He and a friend were hanging out on the pier in Oscoda, and one guy got too deep out there, and his friend tried to save him but neither one of them could swim very well and were yelling and going under. Pat noticed something was wrong tore off his sneakers and jumped in right off the pier and pulled both of them in.

He got in the newspapers all over the north half of Michigan. Grandma Allen showed us the article in the Clare Sentinel, and I remember her bragging about it - she was so proud of him. I bet she called everyone she knew. I later told this story to his children at the funeral home - he was a hero, and I wanted them to make sure they heard this story. Kathy and Theo had forgotten all about it over the years.

Pat was a great guy, he was generous to a fault. One of the last times we saw him in 1993 in Atlanta, before we had kids, while we on vacation. The last time we saw him was 2 weeks before he died, at his niece's wedding on Battle Creek, MI. He had to outside the hall and sit down for a while. My dad was there. As we were leaving, with baby Nathan in hand, I remember dad saying to Pat, "Now don't you go starting any trouble!"and Pat said to him "Oh come on, Uncle Paul, I'm a Mickle! That's impossible!" And I said to Pat " Pat, please, you go get yourself well, take care of yourself."

But he was very thin and jaundiced, from Lupus disease, and died of a heart attack in his sleep 2 weeks later.