Michael Young was a good friend for an important period of my life many years ago when I worked for him and Glenn Doman as a “hod” carrier for Muckerheide Construction for about 6 months. I had just come back to the area after graduate school, living at home, sweating job applications for salaried positions and generally miserable at aged 26. Construction was the best paying position I could get then, and I needed the cash. Michael ran things on a daily basis for Bruce Muckerheide as far as I could tell, even though he was a step below an older mason on the personnel chart. No matter. Michael was the smartest guy on the job site, properly anticipating everyone’s next move. Despite playing the clueless jock at times, everyone knew to check with him before making your next move on the job site.
We were a small group, worked like madmen in any weather and invariably had too many beers after work, even in the dark afternoons of November and December. He had spent a year or two at UW-Stevens Point where he played basketball, but it did not sit well with him. “Then I became a mason,” he said to me many years later after we briefly reconnected. We saw a Marquette basketball with our spouses in 2014 after I came back to the area and wondered aloud how we had survived as long as we had. I felt right at home once again with a natively smart, funny guy, talking about family, musky fishing (he had a tattoo of a musky lure on his leg), the Packers, and West Bend personalities and realizing how fortunate we had been over the years. He told me of his working on the building of the Museum of Wisconsin Art which now anchors the downtown. He seemed pleased, as he deserved to be. It was a pleasure to see him then and a fortunate few times afterwards. May he rest in peace.
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Michael Young was a good friend for an important period of my life many years ago when I worked for him and Glenn Doman as a “hod” carrier for Muckerheide Construction for about 6 months. I had just come back to the area after graduate school, living at home, sweating job applications for salaried positions and generally miserable at aged 26. Construction was the best paying position I could get then, and I needed the cash. Michael ran things on a daily basis for Bruce Muckerheide as far as I could tell, even though he was a step below an older mason on the personnel chart. No matter. Michael was the smartest guy on the job site, properly anticipating everyone’s next move. Despite playing the clueless jock at times, everyone knew to check with him before making your next move on the job site.
We were a small group, worked like madmen in any weather and invariably had too many beers after work, even in the dark afternoons of November and December. He had spent a year or two at UW-Stevens Point where he played basketball, but it did not sit well with him. “Then I became a mason,” he said to me many years later after we briefly reconnected. We saw a Marquette basketball with our spouses in 2014 after I came back to the area and wondered aloud how we had survived as long as we had. I felt right at home once again with a natively smart, funny guy, talking about family, musky fishing (he had a tattoo of a musky lure on his leg), the Packers, and West Bend personalities and realizing how fortunate we had been over the years. He told me of his working on the building of the Museum of Wisconsin Art which now anchors the downtown. He seemed pleased, as he deserved to be. It was a pleasure to see him then and a fortunate few times afterwards. May he rest in peace.
What a lovely tribute to Mike. Glad you took the time to write it.