Elsie MaeFORTIN

Bay City slow to groove as Madonna's hometown
Thursday, March 13, 2008

BY RYAN J. STANTON
Gazette News Service

BAY CITY -- Bay City's Material Girl was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Monday. And despite all the fanfare that honor brings to Madonna, the limelight likely won't extend to the city where she was born.

Take a stroll down the streets of Bay City and try to find a sign that the musical superstar was born here. There aren't any.

Yet on Aug. 16, 1958, Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone entered the world at 7:05 a.m. at Mercy Hospital on Bay City's East Side. And she has more than just a few ties to this industrial town 115 miles north of Detroit.

Her 96-year-old grandmother -- as well as several first cousins, uncles and at least one aunt -- still live here. Her father, Silvio "Tony" Ciccone, regularly visits Bay City, where he married Madonna's late mother in 1955.

The Queen of Pop herself was spotted visiting her birthplace five years ago, shopping at the St. Laurent Brothers candy shop and stopping by the home where she spent her childhood summers.
So why has Bay City, in more than two decades, never officially recognized or marketed itself as "The Birthplace of Madonna"? Could it be that the city never got past a war of words between the once-controversial pop star and a once-critical mayor?

"I think so," says Bay City Mayor Charles M. Brunner, who believes it was former Mayor Timothy G. Sullivan's refusal to give Madonna a key to the city in 1985 that spoiled relations between Madonna and her birthplace. "I think it was just kind of left at that, and nobody made an attempt to rectify that."

Madonna's publicist did not respond to a request for an interview. But her 96-year-old grandmother, Elsie Fortin, said Madonna considers Bay City a special place from her past. She's just not sure if the feeling is mutual.

"I don't think she thought that Bay City liked her too well," Fortin said.

While Madonna grew up in Pontiac and Rochester Hills, she spent summers and holidays in Bay City with her grandmother after her mother died.

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