The saga of my stepbrother, Russ, is long and complicated. In many ways, I do not know where to begin, nor where to end. There is so much to discuss that my blog posts about him will need to be broken into shorter segments to fairly capture his life’s mishaps and many sojourns.
As mentioned previously, I idolized Russ, and when we first met, I looked up to him as a big brother. He was funny, witty, and edgy. He made me laugh with stories not only about his adventures but also his misadventures. But the more time I spent with him and worked with him at my stepfather’s amusement business, I began to notice risky cracks in his personality that concerned me.
He initially attended Arthur Hill High School in Saginaw and appeared in the 1961 yearbook as a junior. However, he was not listed in the 1962 yearbook. Although my research uncovered language suggesting he graduated from Arthur Hill, I could not find any evidence to support that claim. He may have attended summer school or earned a GED (General Equivalency Diploma, i.e., an alternative to a traditional high school diploma). Given Russ’s unscrupulous friends and what occurred in 1962, I am almost certain that Russ did not graduate from Arthur Hill. In short, he was probably a dropout. In fairness, back in the 1960s it wasn’t unusual for non-academic or unmotivated teenagers to drop out of school and either get a job in one of Saginaw’s auto plants or join the military. Dropping out of high school was also a convenient way for teenagers who resented authority to remove themselves from the discipline and regimentation that high schools demanded. If your hair touched your collar, you were unshaven, wore no belt, had your shirt untucked, wore too much makeup, or your skirt did not touch the floor when you knelt, you were sent to the vice principal’s office for disciplinary action.
In May 1962, the month he should have been preparing for his senior-year graduation, Russ spent 10 days in jail for breach of the peace. He and his friends had explosive tempers and rebellious attitudes. I knew that when Russ was in a difficult situation, he would fight back. In some ways, I became leery of him and started avoiding him. When I found the article about Russ’s arrest in the Saginaw News, it listed his home address not on Ring Street, even though Ring Street had once been his home address and my mother and stepfather’s current home address. At this point in his life, Russ was not living with them and, in all probability, had been kicked out for the bar burglary.
Later in December 1962, Russ spent an additional two days in jail for driving with a revoked license. Ironically, the next day, the local paper announced that Russ was now engaged to his girlfriend, Carol, and that a wedding was planned for the spring of 1963.
(Next week: The Saga of Russ continues)
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