Monday, Nov. 2, 1998 | 11:24 a.m.
Emil Richard "Mickey" Wysocki, a longtime Nevada Test Site warehouse supervisor who played semi-pro baseball and was the father of one-time world class long-distance runner Tom Wysocki, has died. He was 88.
Wysocki, who lived in Las Vegas for 52 years, died Tuesday of heart failure at the Lifecare Center following a brief illness.
Services will be 2:15 p.m. Wednesday at the Southern Nevada Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Boulder City. Desert Memorial handled the arrangements.
"My father had a wonderful sense of humor," said Jean Wysocki of Las Vegas, his youngest of six children. "He told funny stories about baseball and other things."
One story Wysocki recently told his daughter was that he once played for a baseball team that had a nasty manager who routinely yelled at his players for making the smallest mistakes. As the beet-faced manager was bellowing after one play, bird droppings fell on him, drawing roars of laughter from the small crowd.
"Dad said he never could take the guy seriously after that," Jean said.
Despite being wounded in both legs while serving in the Navy in the Pacific during World War II, Wysocki played second base for a Las Vegas semi-pro team at the old Cashman Field in the late 1940s.
Wysocki got his nickname from his favorite baseball player, Mickey Cochrane, who played for the Philadelphia Athletics and Detroit Tigers in the 1920s and '30s.
In the 1920s, Wysocki attended his first Major League game in Chicago and saw New York Yankee legend Babe Ruth play.
Although a die-hard baseball fan, Wysocki watched track and field or cross country when Tom, a graduate of Western High School and UNR, was competing.
Mickey and the rest of his family was on hand Nov. 11, 1979, to witness Tom Wysocki become a part of one of the most heart-touching moments in local sports history.
Wysocki, going for his fifth straight win in the Las Vegas Mini-Marathon, dedicated that race to revered local sports official Myron Partridge, who was dying of cancer but was at the event serving as honorary starter and referee.
Wysocki won the race in 1:04:08, shattering the previous record by more than two minutes. At the awards ceremony, Wysocki gave his trophy to Partridge.
In front of a large crowd that had gathered outside Henderson's Eldorado Club, Tom then thanked Partridge for the five decades he had devoted to Las Vegas youth activities and hugged him as a proud and teary-eyed Mickey Wysocki looked on.
Tom Wysocki, who was a 1980 Olympic Games alternate in the 10,000 meters, and his wife, 1984 U.S. Olympian Ruth Wysocki, now live in Canyon Lake, Calif. She competed in the 800 and 1500 meters at the Los Angeles Games.
Three weeks after the 1979 Las Vegas Mini-Marathon, Partridge died. A short time later, the track at UNLV was named in his honor.
Mickey also received heartfelt honors for his work. In 1996, the Disabled American Veterans Chapter 11 honored him with the title of state chaplain emeritus for his many years of dedication to the organization.
Born June 30, 1910, in Warsaw, N.D., a small town near Grand Forks, Wysocki was one of five children of carpenter Frank and Frances Wysocki.
He left school after the eighth grade during the Depression to help support the family by doing farm work.
In the Navy, Wysocki was a storekeeper, a job that gave him the skills that helped get him the Test Site job in 1958.
Before that, Wysocki, who moved to Las Vegas from Los Angeles in 1946, worked as a downtown gas station lube man and then as a Yellow Cab Company lube supervisor.
He retired form the Test Site on his 62nd birthday in 1972.
Wysocki enjoyed good health until a few weeks ago. A longtime Anaheim Angels and San Diego Padres fan, he fell ill before the Padres won the National League pennant and did not recover to see them play the Yankees in the recent World Series.
In addition to his daughter and son, Wysocki is survived by his wife of 59 years, Nellie Wysocki; two other sons, Michael Wysocki and Dale Wysocki, both of Las Vegas; two other daughters, Sharon Davidson of Las Vegas and Ruth Fallon of Orlando, Fla.; two brothers, Ambrose Wysocki of Minto, N.D., and Florian Wysocki of Grand Forks; a sister, Dorothy Leff of Detroit; four grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
He was preceded in death by a brother, Clarion Wysocki, who was killed while fighting in the Battle of the Bulge during World War II.
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