“Coronado is still Coronado”, states Michele “Mickey” Bourke, from the couch of her existing home where she was brought from Coronado Hospital in 1944. I had an opportunity to speak with her at length about her upbringing and I can’t help but feel a connection, to her and to Coronado, as I was born at Coronado Hospital as well. She points out the window, as we sit on her couch, and shows me all the buildings that have been there since the day she came home. As we drink our tea, Mickey shares, “People say Coronado has changed, well that apartment building is still there, the house next door to me is still there, and the one over there is still the same,… you find your community, that’s Coronado.” We both agree that this town is special, as she opens up about her family history, dating back to the early 1900’s.
Born as an Anderson to Bud and Elizabeth “Betty”, Mickey comes from a family that is a Coronado institution of sorts. She is gracious and unassuming, “I’m lucky”, she says, “I don’t get to talk a lot about it, you know. I mean, you don’t go around saying ‘I’m an Anderson’. No, I don’t do that.” I was lucky enough to meet her when I was with my cousin, a new neighbor. Mickey was walking out of her home and introduced herself. We began by looking at pictures, “This is one of my favorite pictures…It’s a treasure”. The picture is of her father, Bud, on his christening day, held by her grandmother, Caroline “Cari” and standing in front of their tent, #1326, as part of the original Tent City. Her uncle, Clare, is also in the picture along with other family members. Bud and Clare started Anderson’s Coronado Home Bakery as a free standing building, on Orange Avenue, in the space next to where Starbucks is today. The bakery business was managed by the family for 81 years. It was built in 1910 after her grandparents started baking bread from a brick oven built in their residence at 723 F Avenue and delivering the bread by horse and buggy. They would bake bread for the hospital, and later for the Hotel Del. A similar brick oven was built
on site in the store and remains in the same spot. Her father and uncle also built the Crown Shops, located at 10th and C Avenue, in 1942. Both properties are owned and shared by the families to this day.
Although Mickey, her sister Linda, and her cousins David, Grace and Cheryl were all required to work in the bakery from the age of 13, she does not consider herself a baker. When asked the question she says, “When I started at the age of 13, I would scrub the pans in the back. We had to do that you know. People say to me, ‘you never scrubbed a pan in your life’, well I did. They had to be clean too! We all washed dishes at various times. So, I never learned to bake. We would make little tart pies, and you know, we would have to pinch it like so, and it just wouldn’t turn out.” She says now, “I make the best Duncan Hines chewy brownies you’ve ever tasted.” She ran the bakery with her cousins for several weeks, when her parents went to Europe. The bakery had an outstanding reputation for all of its baked goods and cake decorating. She claims her cousin Cheryl is the talent, recalling a time when she won first place for decorating a cake with the San Diego skyline and bridge shortly after it was built. When asked why her box brownies taste so good by her kids and others, “I just told the kids that mine are made with love”.
Mickey and her sister received all their sacraments from Sacred Heart Church, attended school at Sacred Heart and then went to Our Lady of Peace (OLP). At the end of Mickey’s sophomore year she decided she wanted to transfer to Coronado High School. “I really felt strongly that one of his children should graduate from his Alma Mater. It’s across the street for heaven’s sake,” when referencing her father. “My parents talked and decided they would let me go there. I graduated in ’63.” That same summer, before transferring to CHS, she began working as a candy striper for Coronado Hospital. She explains her unique experience. “I worked strange hours. If somebody called in sick, one of the nurses would call me to come in because I had been taught so much by the nurses, because I was so curious and I wanted to become a nurse. They made me a practical nurse and so I had my own patients. I had wonderful experiences. I got to see babies born, I got to go into the emergency room when people would come in, and I would help out. I was invigorated by the work.” She even shared a story of being at a friend’s memorial 50 years later when she was approached by a former patient in praise of her care and kindness to him, in the aftermath of a tragic accident. Mickey shifted gears with her passion for nursing when attending Mercy College of Nursing, and after taking a combined course of anatomy and physiology exclaimed, “It wiped me slick”. She then attended Mesa College and received her degree as a Medical Assistant.
Mickey married Robert “Bob” Bourke shortly after college. They met through her cousin Cheryl’s husband, Mike. All four of them attended the first date, in October, at San Diego State University, where they listened to a jazz quartet, followed by dancing at the Hotel Del. Bob and Mickey married and had their first child, Sarah, within 17 months of that first date. They moved around with Bob’s job in the Navy and then as a civilian in the Office of Naval Intelligence. Gone from Coronado for 21 years, having three more children, Michael Randall “Randy”, Brian and adopting Julie from the Philippines at two weeks, they returned to Coronado in 1987. “I have never been so glad to get back home. This house is nothing but it’s where I came home. It is everything to me and I have never been happier.” Even when she travels to visit her children and grandchildren around the country she explains further her idea of coming home. “You know when I fly into town, if I go to Arizona or go back east to see my children, I always try to sit on the right side of the plane. Sometimes I don’t, but I can see just, sometimes just the corner, if I’m on the left hand side, I can see the corner of the bridge, and I go, ‘I’m home’”.
In the sharing of her love for the town we call home, we conclude by walking down her picture filled hallway, fondly called “memory lane”. I learn many more amazing stories about a rich family history – enough to write a short novel. What stands out through each one is the vein of blessings that form a piece of her heart for Coronado.
As I leave, I can’t help feeling she is the blessing and I am the lucky recipient – a resident in an ever evolving town with a community that will always feel like home.
