Manuel Martin Brito

9/24/1929 - 10/25/2019

Known to his family as “Sonny,” and his coworkers as Mike, he was born in Middleport, PA a month before the stock market crash of 1929 to a Portuguese immigrant father and a Polish-Lithuanian immigrant mother. Named after his grandfather and the first king of Portugal or perhaps the more famous biblical Immanuel. The family name Brito is first mentioned in the 12th century as an old Portuguese family of three brothers who took part in the crusades and showed special bravery and loyalty. Infamously the name Richard le Breton or Richard de Brito appears in 1170 as one of the knights who killed Thomas Beckett, the Archbishop of Canterbury. In the 15th and 16th centuries the men who took this name were decorated for their bravery in driving the moors from the Iberian peninsula. In 1689 a Ricardo Alveres Britossa was awarded a family crest for service to the country.

Sonny's father (Anibal) was one of four brothers (Antonio, Acurio, Anibal and Abel) who immigrated from Portugal with three of them going to the USA and Abel going to South America. The oldest brother, Antonio, came first to the USA and helped Anibal reach the USA from Cuba. According to his wife Julia Budresky, Anibal didn't want to go into the army and reached Cuba as a stowaway. Sonny's parents met at a wedding but neither of them spoke the other's language so english became their common language in courtship which, in the day, as described by Julia, was "sitting on a porch talking". There must have been real chemistry between the two given their limited common vocabulary. Years later all the children of Anibal and Julia visited Portugal and saw their uncle Acurio in the small ancestral village. There was a child of a distant cousin in the village who had a matching hair patch of light hair just like Sonny’s which he always remembered fondly.

Middleport PA was a small town whose success was closely tied to the coal industry. Middleport PA had a population of 1,225 in 1930, 1,077 in 1940 and 942 in 1950. Anibal was a coal miner who died from black lung in 1944 at an age of 46 when Sonny was fifteen years old. Sonny always said the Portuguese immigrants who worked the mines got the dirtiest and most dangerous jobs. Sonny was a child of the depression, average in stature he was "the third toughest kid" in the town, of what had to be scores of boys within years of his age. One wonders how such ranking occurs but fighting one of the toughest appears to be the logical conclusion. Joe, his second son, having lived in this town periodically with some the sons of Sonny's friends imagined time was spend in the woods around the town, hunting rabbits (Sonny didn't like cats because they killed rabbits) , camping overnight, skinny dipping the rain filled stripings or just being boys around a small town. All the kids in the town had nicknames and Joe took his father's nickname of Nebs. Sonny once told a story of how he and his friends camped overnight at one of numerous creeks and stashed their morning bacon in the creek only to find it gone the next morning. A racoon or muskrat was the likely thief and the hungry boys had to end their trip earlier than expected.

The early death of his father must have put an end to his carefree days at the age of fifteen and against the advice of his father’s brothers, his mother chose to keep the family together. He quickly began his lifetime of work with the help of his four sisters (ages 17, 12, 10 and 7) and mother. His oldest sister, Delores quit high school so Sonny could finish, despite him replacing first period math class with driving a milk truck and working after school in a hospital kitchen. His younger sister Marie was twelve, Emily was 10 and Margie was only 7 when their father died. Sonny graduated High School in 1947 and his yearbook writeup describes him as being fond of the ladies with them responding in kind. He worked briefly as an Assistant Chef in the Muhlenberg Hospital in Plainfield NJ after graduation. He spoke fondly of the Head Chef as helping him decide to strive for something better than working in a kitchen his whole life. He also retained a fondness and skill for cooking the rest of his life.