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On a hot Summers day back in 1993 a cop pulls up to our house to deliver a message, the message was my cousin Charlotte and her daughter Brenda were hitchhiking to Cass Lake from Minneapolis, they got stuck at Grand Casino, and wanted someone to come get them. My mom thought this was odd because Charlotte didn’t have a daughter named Brenda, her sister Sharon did. We tried as hard as we could to find a ride to go get them.
We had no luck finding a ride, so we patiently waited for them. Four or five hours later Sharon and her two-year-old daughter Brenda come strolling up into the yard. We asked Sharon why she said her name was Charlotte she told us that she had warrants so she gave her sisters name to the cops.
For two or three months Sharon and Brenda lived with us. Every once in a while mom and Sharon had to ‘catch up on old times’ so when they left I would keep all the kids, there was my 2 sisters, 2 brothers and Brenda. I really didn’t mind because I was the oldest in the house to baby-sit anyway. Brenda and I clicked right away; my mom said it was because I acted like her when I was little. (An angel with horns) She’d do things like pull my little brothers hair or pinch him and make him cry when no one was looking and when we’d ask her what happened she’d say she didn’t know.
Even though I was always babysitting those were the happiest days of my life, I thought Sharon and Brenda were going to live with us forever. Then one night Sharon announced she and Brenda were going to leave in the morning on the Greyhound bus back to the cities. I was heart-broken and devastated, more so for Brenda because of the little time that we had spent together I grew to love that little girl, a cousin of mine whom I had just met and fell in love with. I think I spent more time with Brenda then her own mother did! (My mom and her mom went out a lot.)
Now Brenda wasn’t an only child, Sharon had four kids. Brenda was the oldest one of her siblings too. After Sharon and Brenda left I told my mom that I missed Brenda she said “me too.” Months went by without any word of when Sharon and Brenda would come visit again. We started to give up hope. Then one day when we were all visiting at my uncles’ house Sharon’s aunt comes over to tell us that she was in Hennipen County Medical Center for trying to commit suicide.
It was claimed she was an unfit mother and her children were taken away from her and placed in foster care. Her children were split up and shifted around in different homes. Our county was asking us if we (my mom) could take them, all of them. My mom couldn’t do it; we were barely making ends meat as we were. A few years after the kids were put through the humiliation of being split up and taken from their mother, we found out they were all together in a home with Sharon’s cousin Terri Allen and Terri’s half brother Kevin Lange. We were happy because all the kids were together.
As time went by I had a child of my own, a little boy named Tyrell Tomah Lee Mitchell he was born on July 8th, 1996. After I was sure of myself and had all of my own things I asked Sharon if I could have Brenda, she said “yes!” So I gave her my address and asked her if she would send me some adoption papers. I never received papers for her; at that moment I should’ve known something wasn’t right. Sharon told me later on that she sent the papers to the wrong address. (Wrong P.O. Box) And from that point on I was scared. (I can’t explain it like an eerie feeling) Like I knew something bad was going to happen, and I was just waiting for it.
As time went by everyone thought everything was ok. Sharon was in and out of treatment for trying to commit suicide, she only came once or twice to see the family and she never brought the kids. (The kids were in foster care with Terri and Kevin.) When she came to visit she told me that Brenda was always asking about when they were going to come visit Som-ner (She couldn’t say my name right so she’d say Som-ner)
In my life, back in 1998 my son’s dad and I weren’t together any more. (He was in and out of prison too much to have a real relationship) I ran across one of my old flames, Frank J. Raisch jr. and we automatically hit it off again. We were in so much love that I wanted to have another baby. So we started trying. I found out later that I did get pregnant.
In early November 1999 a story aired on WCCO channel 12, about a little girl who was beaten and left unconscious, the little girl had died. I never thought it was anybody I knew. One day I was sitting at my mom’s visiting and waiting for the story about the little girl so I could tell my mom about it, When my uncle Pat came over and asked us if we’d been watching the news on channel 12, and if we heard the story about the little girl who was beaten to death. We said “yeah, but we missed it today.” Just then Pat told me something that would haunt me forever, he told us that the little girl they were talking about

Tony Curtis
Actor whose good looks and charm took him to the heights of Hollywood with films such as Some Like It Hot and The Defiant Ones

Born into a family of Hungarian Jews who had emigrated to the US, Bernard Schwartz – the boy who became the actor Tony Curtis – could scarcely have dreamed of the wealth, fame and rollercoaster life that awaited him. Curtis, who has died aged 85, starred in several of the best films of the 1950s, including Sweet Smell of Success (1957), The Defiant Ones (1958) and Some Like It Hot (1959). He enjoyed a long career thanks to his toughness and resilience (despite insecurities that demanded years of therapy).

He grew up in the Bronx, New York, the eldest of three sons. As a child, he was ill-treated by his mother, Helen, and spent time in an orphanage. One of his brothers, Robert, was a schizophrenic and the other, Julius, was killed in a traffic accident when Tony was 12. At school he became a member of a gang involved in petty crime, but he escaped into the Scouts. He endured poverty and the Depression and, in 1943, joined the US navy, serving as a signalman in the second world war.

He emerged, aged 20, into a world of opportunities – the first being postwar government funding for GIs to train for a career. He decided on acting (his father, Emanuel, had been an actor before becoming a tailor) and entered the Dramatic Workshop in New York. He took the lead in a Greenwich Village revival of Golden Boy, written by Clifford Odets, and was spotted by a studio talent scout and offered a contract by Universal. He first chose Anthony Adverse as his professional name, inspired by the eponymous hero of a novel by Hervey Allen. A casting director persuaded him otherwise, so he kept "Anthony" and added "Curtis", anglicising a common Hungarian surname.

Like the far grander MGM, or the Rank Organisation's "charm school" in the UK, Universal had a policy of training promising talent. The prerequisites were good looks and ambition. Curtis had both in abundance. He made his uncredited film debut in Robert Siodmak's Criss Cross (1949), as a gigolo who dances with Yvonne de Carlo, watched by the male lead, Burt Lancaster, who later played a significant part in Curtis's career.

After this 30-second screen exposure, he notched up 10 appearances in two years, including the westerns Sierra and Winchester 73 (both 1950). He later said that the performances were "guided by testosterone, not talent". He and the other Universal proteges, including Rock Hudson, were trained in acting, fencing, riding and dancing. By 1951 he was considered ready for the lead in a swashbuckler, The Prince Who Was a Thief, and was married to the starlet Janet Leigh, who later appeared alongside him in films including The Vikings (1958).

Curtis went on to star in a slew of second-grade movies, such as Son of Ali Baba (1952) and Houdini (1953). His big break into A-features came when Lancaster chose him as his co-star in Trapeze (1956). They made a convincing pair of high flyers, and the glossy movie, directed by Carol Reed, was an international hit.

After playing the lead in Blake Edwards's Mister Cory (1957), Curtis joined Lancaster again in Sweet Smell of Success, produced by Lancaster's company. A superb screenplay, co-written by Odets, was the launchpad for Alexander Mackendrick's vividly achieved portrait of obsession and betrayal. Lancaster played the reptilian, all-powerful, New York columnist besotted with his sister. Curtis was Sidney Falco, an unprincipled press agent in thrall to (and fear of) the man who could make him king of the jungle, and willing to sell his pride and soul for the title. It gave Curtis the reviews and credibility for which he had yearned.

Routine movies followed until The Defiant Ones gave him his first and only Oscar nomination, for best actor. This modestly liberal story – an archetypal Stanley Kramer film – proved important for Curtis, who insisted that his black co-star Sidney Poitier share top billing. It was significant as a commercially successful film, making a plea for racial tolerance, directed and acted with force and integrity. Although he did not get the Oscar (which went to David Niven for Separate Tables), Curtis was soon to receive a greater prize – the second great movie of his career, Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot.

Appearing alongside Jack Lemmon and – less happily – a difficult Marilyn Monroe, Curtis enjoyed three sublime manifestations in the film. First, as one of two jazz musicians who flee from gangsters after witnessing the St Valentine's Day massacre in Chicago in 1929. Second, in drag as a member of the all-girl band which provides his camouflage. And last as a fake oil millionaire – out to seduce Marilyn – played as a wonderful homage to Cary Grant. "Marilyn was an enigma," he later said. "She was very difficult to read. Marilyn and I were lovers in 1949, 1950, 1951 ... It was an important relatio