Practically all of the 500+ letters my father wrote began ... Dear Mother, Harry, and Mike. Well, Mother is obvious. Harry was his brother. So, who was Mike? Mike was his dog. He loved his dog. Mike was part of their family, so when he wrote his mother and brother, he wrote his doggie too. Many years after he died, my mother gave my brother Mike a photo of my father with his dog and he asked the obvious question: What was the dog's name? My mother told him, Mike. "I'm named after a dog?" was my brother's next question. "Your father loved that dog," was my mothers reply. There is no denying my mother spoke the truth. For two and a half years, my father wrote home during WWII, and he included Mike in almost every single letter.
