Childhood days were filled with faith, hard work

Nourished by their parents and parish, the 14 Brunett siblings - the oldest and youngest 21 years apart - made it through the lean years on Detroit’s East Side

BY TERRY MCGUIRE

Adrian Dominican Sister Rita Brunett remembers the time she and her older brother, Alex, were driving and he said to her: ‘Did you ever think back then that we would be here…that we could be this far?’

Adrian Dominican Sister Rita Brunett says her brother has always “been happy being a priest.”

‘Back then’ referred to their childhood days growing up in poverty on Detroit’s East Side. And ‘this far’ was the eternal city of Rome, a familiar destination during Archbishop Alex J. Brunett’s 50 years of priesthood.

That they were there was testimony to the work ethic and faith-filled upbringing that was instilled in the 14 Brunett children by their parents and their St. Ambrose Parish community.

Their parents, Raymond, a hard-working plumber, and Cecilia, a resourceful homemaker, were the biggest influence on their faith, recalls Bill Brunett, a retired insurance executive and one of the archbishop’s younger brothers. “No matter what we didn’t have, they always saw to it that the church came first,” he said. “They were very, very strong in their faith.”

He said he learned in later years that his parents had been among the top contributors to St. Ambrose Parish, a community that included affluent families of Grosse Point Park as well as the poor working class of the East Side. “They probably truly tithed ten percent of their earnings,” he said, “at a time when their earnings were well under $10,000, and with 14 kids” to raise.

The family house on tree-lined Newport Street was the focal point of their faith life. A large painting of the Sacred Heart of Jesus graced a downstairs wall, and prayer was a regular part of the day.

The eight Brunett sisters pose with their parents, Raymond and Cecilia Brunett. From left are m left: Mary Jennings, Adrian Dominican Sister Rita Brunett, Anne, Rose Bezzi, Grace Kassa, Ruth, Jean Dawson and Margaret Duffie. The parents and Anne Brunett are now deceased.

“When we were small they used to line us up on the couch – dad at one end and mom at the other – and taught us the Sign of the Cross, the Our Father, the Hail Mary, all the regular prayers,” said Sister Rita, who is a year younger than the archbishop.

She remembers when she and her siblings would head back to school after lunch. She’d look back at the house and see her mother sitting down to pray the rosary during her quiet time of the day.

Their father was actively involved in the local church community as a member of the Knights of Columbus, the St. Vincent de Paul Society and as the long-serving head usher at St. Ambrose Church. A papal blessing, obtained by Archbishop Brunett, hangs in the church sacristy today. It honors “Raymond B. Brunett and the ushers at St. Ambrose.”

The Brunetts, who met at a Knights of Columbus dance, were married 63 years, up to Raymond’s death in 1993. She died three years later.

Their 14 children were born over a 21-year span, so siblings such as Alex were already gone from home when some of the younger Brunetts arrived.

Second of 14 children
The future archbishop was the second of the 14. Born on a snowy Jan. 17, 1934 into an Irish-German American family whose Detroit roots extended back generations, he was named after his uncle, Father Alexander Joseph Brunett, who died of peritonitis only four years into his priesthood.

The six Brunett brothers gather for a photo. From left, front: Raymond, Alex and William. Back: Michael, Paul and John.

Like his siblings, young Alex attended St. Ambrose School, where the Adrian Dominican sisters were an early influence. Students attended daily Mass before school, and Alex and some of his brothers were altar servers and choir members. “Sister Mora probably influenced him a lot; she was the music teacher and he loved being in the choir,” Sister Rita said.
The parish priests also were major influences, the siblings said.

Father Francis Van Antwerp, whose brother was mayor of Detroit in the late 1940s, was St. Ambrose pastor. A stern but kindly man, he served from 1937 up to his death in 1964. He was the one who in 1958 launched a successful fund-raising drive to send Raymond and Cecilia Brunett to Rome for their son’s ordination.

Father Van Antwerp “used to give Alex and I a half dollar to get our haircut,” remembers Ray Brunett, 75, a mechanical contractor and the oldest of the Brunett siblings.

Ray, like his brothers, was an altar server at St. Ambrose. He recalls how they especially looked forward to being selected to assist at funeral services at a cemetery on the other side of town, because it meant a “nice 45-minute ride and a $5 tip” from one of the priests.

Parents instilled work ethic
St. Ambrose School was a little less than a mile from the Brunett home, and the children walked two round-trips each day because they came home for lunch. During lunch time, the older children were responsible for chores and caring for their younger siblings.
It was symbolic of the work ethic the parents tried to instill.

We “siblings learned responsibility at an early age,” Bill Brunett said, “because our childhood consisted of taking care of each other.

“I can always remember my mother saying, ‘When you turn 18 you are on your own, my responsibility is done,’” he said. And one of their dad’s favorite adages was: ‘If a man pays you for eight hours, you give him eight hours.’

Eight years younger than Alex, Bill Brunett didn’t see his brother as much during their childhood because Alex soon entered the high school seminary.

But he remembers watching his brother disappearing into the bedroom to study, and sitting at the kitchen table doing homework during the summer months, a Detroit Tigers’ game on the radio. “That type of discipline – a lot of it just came from how we were raised,” he said.
Although they were a poor family, the children didn’t realize it, the siblings said.

Still, they remember the assistance they received from the St. Vincent de Paul Society and from Goodfellows, a service organization of newspaper carriers.

“Many of my Christmases were supplied by the St. Vincent de Paul Society,” Archbishop Brunett remembered in a 1997 interview.

Bill Brunett recalls waiting at Christmastime for the police car to pull up to the house bearing gifts from Goodfellows. Each package included long johns, a pair of knickers and a certificate for new shoes. “The shoes had to last you for the year,” he said. So “when the soles wore out you’d get cardboard from the grocery store, cut an insole out, and that would last for a couple of days.”

The siblings also remember their dad’s “Army soup,” a concoction of whatever produce he could obtain at low or no cost from the farmers’ market near the end of their day. He also was fond of reciting poetry at the dinner table.

Their mother made all the children’s clothes, adding something different to each garment to make it distinctive for each child.

For the children, the experience of lifting themselves up by their bootstraps helped make them hard-working and independent thinkers and more prone to charitable giving, because they, too, had been there, Bill Brunett said.

The family lived in a two-story house with four bedrooms. The future archbishop, who shared a room with his brothers, would joke later that he entered the seminary after grade school just so he could have his own room. Ray Brunett recalls how the sleeping arrangements would temporarily become even more crowded when their parents would take in service men home from the war on furlough. “We were like logs in a bed,” he said.

Siblings knew he’d go far
The three Brunett siblings interviewed for this article said they are extremely proud -- but not surprised -- to see their brother among the church hierarchy today. They could see that his intelligence, studiousness, energy, work ethic and love for the priesthood would take him far.
Ray Brunett likes to share the story of how industrious – and charmed -- his brother was when they were both newspaper carriers for the Detroit Times. One evening, while seeking new subscribers in order to win a free trip to Boston, the two boys went door-to-door on opposite sides of the street in affluent Grosse Point Park. Ray quickly got arrested by police for breaking some solicitation curfew.

“So I’m down there (at the police station) getting fingerprinted and booked and everything else…and (Alex) goes down the other side of the street and gets five new customers!,” Ray Brunett recalled. “I said that proves to me there’s something special about him; (he) had that gift of gab.

“And he won the trip to Boston.”

Sister Rita, now retired after years of ministry as a teacher, counselor and hospital minister, said her brother’s hard work as a priest, including his efforts in the ecumenical movement, eventually earned him the recognition he deserved.

Moreover, he’s always been a “good priest,” she said “because he’s happy being a priest.
“He does two things that I find among the priests that I know that I admire very much: He has always had a special ministry to the sick…and he always spends a significant amount of time preparing homilies. He never just gets up and rattles it off.”

He was always a good student, she said of their childhood years -- a boy who would throw his heart and soul into whatever he was doing.

“When he went to the seminary (after eighth grade), we didn’t see him much,” she said. “He’d take two buses to the other side of town; it took him an hour-and-a-half to get there. He’d go to school all day, come home, go right up to his room to study, eat with the family, then go to bed early enough to do it again the next day. He did it for eight years.”

Always a good student, he was valedictorian of his college class at Detroit’s Sacred Heart Seminary, and was selected to continue his studies at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. Ordained in Rome on July 13, 1958, he celebrated his first Mass in the U.S. at St. Ambrose.

Following assignments as an associate pastor, college chaplain and seminary academic dean, he became pastor of St. Aidan Parish in the Detroit suburb of Livonia, serving 18 years. He was pastor for three years of the huge Shrine of the Little Flower Parish in the Detroit suburb of Royal Oak when Pope John Paul II appointed him bishop of the Diocese of Helena, Mont.

Bill Brunett said the entire family was “gratified and thrilled” at his appointment as bishop. He only wishes their father had lived to see it. Still, “you could really feel his spirit during that ceremony,” he said.