Category: Chapter 7: Fay and Cecil

Fay and Cecil

So life went back to normal, sort of. Alfred was no longer in the picture as Fay and he never lived in Charlevoix again. Right after the war, Alfred became involved with a man named David and they moved to Florida, but they too separated and both married women soon after. Fay and Alfred stayed in touch and remained close, visiting one another throughout their lifetimes. Fay, not surprisingly, became close friends with Alfred’s wife.

Mac went back to New York and moved in with his lover, Bill and Fay would visit New York as often as he could. Mac and Bill stayed together for 50 years until Mac died in 1998.

Fay visiting his brother Roy and family with Mabel, Lew and Thelma 

For a few months after his discharge in early 1946, Fay popped around, spent some time in Charlevoix and Chicago, but ultimately ended up in Lansing. After everything he had experienced, Charlevoix must have felt too small and the lingering sting around his late-in-the-game draft was still raw. It was time to move on. I believe that Fay left northern Michigan with Mabel’s blessing. They stayed close, with Mabel and Lew visiting Lansing whenever they had a chance.

His older brother Cecil had recently reopened up a dance hall on North Washington Street in Lansing and he could offer Fay some work, so Fay packed up what little he had and moved in with Cecil and his family.

Cecil had lost his wife, Hester in 1940 when she was only 38 to kidney disease, and he had quickly remarried Sylvia a year later. Sylvia was more than 10 years younger than Cecil and was considered a beauty. She had a daughter from a brief, previous marriage and was only a few years older than Cecil’s oldest daughter. Fay lived for a time with Cecil, Sylvia, her daughter and three of Cecil’s five children. 

In a move that was little understood by my family, Cecil opened up Bradley Hall as Townsend Club No.14. He had been involved with the Lansing Townsend Club during its heyday in the mid-1930s and was still engaged with the movement even though the clubs were losing their luster.

In 1951, Lansing boasted the largest Townsend Club in the nation with 8,000 members. What Cecil had to do with the popularity of the club even after its original purpose was no longer relevant might have had a lot to do with Bradley Hall.

Townsend Clubs

Dr. Francis E Townsend

Townsend Clubs were the organizational structure of a grassroots group started during the Depression that supported the so-called Townsend Plan. Cooked up by Dr. Francis E. Townsend in California, it was a pension-recovery plan that called for giving all US citizens over 60 $200 a month that they had to spend by the end of each month. Townsend’s thinking was that such a plan would not only create a pension system for older workers, but would also stimulate the economy, which it sorely needed, because the over-60 crowd would each be spending $200 a month in their community.

The Townsend Plan was pre-cursor, but unrelated, to Social Security. It would be financed by a 2% national sales tax.

The genius behind the success of the organization was the creation of Townsend Clubs. People 60 and above flocked to the clubs all over the country to get behind the idea of an old-age pension.

The clubs usually met weekly, listened to speakers and discussed the revolving pension plan. Many clubs offered food and additional entertainment. There was feeling of solidarity within the “movement” and it also provided a much-needed social outlet for its members.

By the end of 1934, the Townsend organization claimed 2,000 clubs, 300,000 active club members, and 15 million so-called “supporters.” Members paid dues and those dues were split between the local, state and national levels of the organization.

On paper, Bradley Hall was a venue for a number of activities including bingo and dancing for everyone. It was open on weekends and Fay ran the restaurant with the new man in his life – Jimmy Ryan.

Barb and Shirley

During the year that Fay was moving between Charlevoix, Chicago and Lansing, my mother was finishing up nursing school. She graduated in June of 1946 into a world that was much different than she had envisioned when she started school in 1943. She had been prepared to go overseas and into the war medical service, but now she didn’t need to be a heroine.

The war was over and life was beginning to return to a kind of normalcy, but it was no longer the same as before the war.  Life seemed more precious in those years and while prosperity seemed to be on the horizon, jobs were hard to come by especially in Charlevoix.

I’m sure it never occurred to my mother not to work. She came from a long line of working women who always needed a way to make money and she was eager to get going in her new career. When my mother moved back up to Charlevoix a few months after graduation, she was hired in October to be on the nursing staff at Charlevoix Hospital.

Keith had also returned from the war in Europe, having been stationed primarily in England behind a desk. Thelma and he opened a restaurant called Wag’s and while they got their footing, my mother supported them with her wages. I remember my father feeling protective of my mother and later complaining about their assumption that Barb would take care of them.

I’m pretty sure my mother felt it was her duty. She was like that.

Shirley graduated from Charlevoix High School in 1946. She had started dating my Uncle Bill some time after he returned from the war in the fall of 1945 and it was getting serious. 

Charlevoix Football Team 1942

Bill had been in Barb’s high school class and as often happens in small towns they had even dated for a while. He had served for three and a half years in the Marines and saw plenty of action in the Pacific theater. Shirley was a lot of fun and I’m sure fun-loving Bill was drawn to her devil-may-care style.

And even though romance was blooming, Shirley moved down to Lansing that fall to live with Fay. She had a ready made job at Bradley Hall where she ran the deli.

Front page news in the Charlevoix Courier February 12, 1947 announced the upcoming nuptials of the two Bradley girls. The newspaper also covered the bridal showers for each that were held separately as well as full length stories about the weddings.

Bill and Shirley

Shirley married first in March in “an impressive ceremony” at the Congregational Church in front of 60 guests. She wore a grey dressmaker suit and a hat of red carnations while carrying a bouquet of the same flowers. Fay escorted her down the aisle. My mother was her only attendant. Cecil’s daughter Donna sang two popular songs during the ceremony. The reception was held at the Tower Hotel, next to Thelma and Keith’s house. The newly married couple honeymooned in Chicago and then moved down to Lansing, where they both worked at Bradley Hall.

Although the newspaper did not call my parents wedding the following May “impressive” it certainly was. My father was Catholic and my mother was newly converted so a Nuptial High Mass was held at St Mary’s Church. The children’s choir sang Ave Maria. Fay escorted her down the aisle.

My mother wore a gown of white satin and marquisette fashioned with a satin bodice, high neckline and long sleeves, her finger length veils held by orange blossoms  and she carried calla lilies. She was attended by a maid of honor and two bridesmaids, one being Shirley. Although Barney and my father battled a bit over my mother’s news that she would be marrying Jay, he served as my father’s best man. Theresa’s husband and my mother’s maid of honor’s husband served as groomsmen.  They had a breakfast reception at the Wayside Inn for 30 guests.

Les, John, Barney, Jay, Barb, Mary, Leona, Shirley 

At both weddings, Thelma wore the same mother of the bride gown in a nod to practicality and frugality. Mabel and Lew were also prime players in the festivities and Mabel’s dress was also described in detail. The guest list published in the newspaper for both weddings included James Ryan, aka Jimmy Ryan, Fay’s love interest in those years.

My UNCLE's FISHING BOAT


MY DAD'S EARLY LIFE WAS JUST AS TRICKY AS MY MOTHER'S. HE WAS VERY CLOSE TO HIS MOTHER, ALWAYS SPEAKING OF HER WITH GREAT FONDNESS, BUT HE LOST HER TO CANCER WHEN HE WAS JUST 10. AS THE YOUNGEST, JAY LIVED WITH HIS DAD WHILE BARNEY WAS SENT DOWN TO DETROIT TO LIVE WITH AN AUNT. THEIR DAD DIED OF A HEART CONDITION WHEN MY DAD WAS 15, LEAVING HIM WITHOUT A HOME AT A VERY YOUNG AGE.

My parents stayed on in Charlevoix since my mother had a good job at the hospital. My dad worked for his brother-in-law who was a successful commercial fisherman and he pretty much hated it. It’s hard and dirty work and Jay was never quite suited to that life.

Fay and Jimmy

We don’t know much about Jimmy Ryan. Fay and he lived together after Fay moved out of Cecil’s, they had a dog named Daisy and they tried to make a restaurant work at Bradley Hall. It’s not clear where or how they met, but they were together into the early 1950s.

In those days in Lansing, there was an underground gay scene although there is very little record of it. Some have contended that the bar at the Hotel Wentworth was a good place to meet men and some current research has identified a place called Olsen’s Bar as a place for men to meet other men.

Fay and Daisy

Hotel Wentworth 1950s

Olsen’s was a 15 minute walk from Bradley Hall and not far away from the gay bars that opened in the 1970s along Michigan Avenue.

We do know that being identified as gay after the war was riskier than it had been before the war. Before the war, Fay seemed to live a gay life that was neither open nor hidden. The draft board betrayal may have opened his eyes to the dangers of being identified as gay or different for a moment, but Fay was not someone who wanted to take life too seriously. Fay being Fay, one can imagine that he hoped he could move about in the world in the same way he had before the war.

But that was not to be.

The happy, “normal” nuclear family

Gay couple having a beer

Even a year after the war, it was clear that most everyone in the United States wanted to get back to “normal.” The armed services during the war had started to raise the alarm about the “homosexual element” that could disrupt the world of masculinity deemed essential to winning a harsh war, but non-flagrant gayness was somewhat tolerated because there were other more important issues to be addressed. It was also convenient to ignore a soldier’s differences.

But after the war, difference was not normal. The rising influence of psychology and its promise of making people better (or normal) put gays and lesbians in a danger zone.

As early as 1948

Michigan passed a state regulation that prohibited bars from becoming a rendezvous or hang-out for homosexuals.

In 1950

a Michigan US Rep blasted the employment of homosexuals in the government and the state created the notorious Red Squad against un-American activities.

In 1951

a governor’s commission urged harsher penalties for sex offenders.

By 1952

homosexuality was listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health (DSM-1) as a “sociopathic personality disturbance” because it was a “sexual deviation.”

For the next few years, Fay continued to represent the Townsend Club but there seems to be little that he needed to do. He was annually named President of the Club and in 1953 two of Cecil’s married daughters rounded out the slate of officers that year.

For work Fay had a variety of jobs – a door-to-door Fuller Brush salesman, debt collector, chef at Howard Johnson’s Restaurant. He bounced around a bit, lived in a couple of rented houses in Lansing, always had a good car, and often went to a Catholic Church for Sunday Mass.

Some of Fay’s Jobs in the Early 1950s

It’s been said that along the way Cecil’s gambling habits put Fay in some awkward and dangerous situations, but they remained close and Fay maintained strong family ties.

Jimmy and Fay split at some point and Jimmy ended up in Midland where he ran a hair salon. Of course, they stayed in touch.

Lavender Scare

At different points Bradley Hall helped both of Fay’s daughters through a transition. Shirley and Bill had moved down to Lansing right after their wedding in 1947. Shirley worked the deli at the Hall and Bill worked on the line at Oldsmobile for about a year or so. He also called bingo numbers at the Hall during the evening hours.

It’s not clear why they went back home to Charlevoix after a couple of years – maybe they wanted the small town life again, maybe they didn’t like being around Fay’s lifestyle. There is some family lore that supports both theories.

Regardless, they went back to Charlevoix for good, Shirley worked at Wag’s for Thelma and Keith and their son Alan was born there in 1949.

Barb and Jerry

My parents had stayed in Charlevoix after they married and my brother Jerry was born a year later in 1948. My mother was still working at Charlevoix Hospital and my father was doing odds jobs. My mother always claimed that no one would give my dad regular work because she had such a good paying job at the hospital.

Jay and Jerry

They had a second son who they named Robert in June 1950. He was born two months early and only lived for three days. Growing up, we visited his grave every Memorial Day in Charlevoix.

My parents were frightened for both Fay and themselves when Cecil came to warn them about the FBI investigation. When telling Barb and Jay about the trouble, Cecil blamed his mother for treating Fay “like a girl” when he was a boy as if that somehow explained the whole thing.

Fay as an Infant

In those frightening times, all of them feared that they would be caught up in the dragnet simply for associating with Fay. My parents never knew how far the investigation went and they were ultimately untouched by it themselves as far as they knew. Fay continued to be a regular presence in their lives and they carried on as they always had.

Fay, however, was never quite the same after this scary intrusion. For the first time in his carefree life, he went deep into a closet of his own design and he never really came out again.