Michael Cramer Brennan

1956 - 2018
Michael Cramer Brennan, 61, of Brooklyn, NY, died at home on Monday, August 6, 2018, ending a heroic nearly four-year struggle with an extremely rare cancer. Mike was born on August 22, 1956, in Richmond Heights, MO, to William J. Brennan and Suzanne S. Brennan. He grew up in the St. Louis suburb of Rock Hill, attending Mary, Queen of Peace grade school and Saint Louis University High, from which he graduated in 1974. He played football and baseball for MQP and became a lifelong fan of the Cardinals. At SLUH he excelled as the yearbook photographer. He earned a B.A. in history from University of Missouri in 1978 and, after a backpacking trip to the British Isles, enrolled at Georgetown Law School and received a J.D. in 1981. That year he transplanted himself to Brooklyn, where he was hired as an assistant district attorney under Elizabeth Holtzman. From 1988, when he married his beloved wife of 30 years, Janice Marla Novet, until 1995, he served in New York City's Department of Investigations. Then in 1995 he joined the Labor Relations department at SUNY Downstate Medical Center, from which he retired in 2010. He certified as an athletic trainer and worked at the New York Sports Club in Brooklyn until his illness. For many years he coached the baseball teams of his boys, Kevin and Jamie, and ran every morning for an hour in Prospect Park. He was an avid reader of history, politics, baseball, architecture, and literature, as well as The Times. He loved entertaining in their 19th-century brownstone and taking their family vacations to St. Louis, Peekskill, N.Y., Jupiter, Fla., Jamaica, Cancun, Montreal, Cape May, N.J., and Asheville, N.C.. Mike is survived by and will be deeply missed by his wife, Janice; their sons, Kevin Brennan (Cassie Biggs) and James Brennan (Emily Lucas); his granddaughter, Abagail Grace Brennan; his brothers, Timothy Brennan (Sarah Lammert), Matthew Brennan (Beverley Simms), and Christopher Brennan; his brothers-in-law and other sisters-in-law, Gina and Hank Pacht, and Matthew and Judy Novet; his nieces and nephews, Emma Brennan (Derek Duquette), David Brennan, and Dan Brennan (Brittany), Alex Novet, Tyler Novet, and Michael Novet, and Rebecca Pacht (Phil Nachum); his great-niece and great-nephew, Ava and Cannon Brennan; and many cousins and friends. A memorial will be held on October 27, 2018, at 2 p.m., at the Ethical Society in Brooklyn.