People News

Madonna not her brother's keeper: Sibling shoeless, homeless

By April MacIntyre Oct 24, 2011, 2:28 GMT

05/02/2011 - Madonna - 2011 Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Gala - Arrivals - Metropolitan Museum of Art - New York City, New York © M Van Niedek / PR Photos

What can you say when someone insanely rich lets her brother languish in the cold, without a home?

Shocking news from Traverse City, Michigan, as the michiganmessenger.com reveals that the Material Girl, who has enough money to gift to Africa, allegedly lets her own flesh and blood fall through the cracks.

Anthony Ciccone, brother of Michigan native and pop star Madonna was interviewed by the Michigan Messenger.

Ciccone gave them an earful.

“This is a unique system with the churches here,” Ciccone, 55, said over a roast beef dinner served by volunteers at the Faith Reform Church on Front St. “You won’t find this in too many places.”

The faithful network of churches has taken the homeless to heart, and offered meals each night and breakfast, along with warmth, showers, laundry, food, computers, telephone and other services for four hours most days, and in the winter a place to sleep.

Ciccone lives among the city’s homeless for a year and a half after he lost a job at his father’s vineyard and winery in Suttons Bay. Now he sleeps under the Union St. bridge.

“My family turned their back on me, basically, when I was having a hard time,” he said. “You think I haven’t answered this kind of question a bazillion times — why my sister is a multibazillionarie, and I’m homeless on the street?”

“Never say never,” he said. “This could happen to anybody.”

“I don’t have any income, I’ve got to go collect bottles and cans, do odd jobs.”

"If you spend enough time on frozen concrete without proper insulation you will get frostbite, he said. “You have no idea how gruesome it is.”

“You get nerve damage. That’s the milder stage, in the severe stage you have tissue damage, that is when you lose parts of your body.”

“I got frostbite on my feet last winter, Ciccone said. “A friend of mine lost all ten toes. Several have died of hypothermia.”

“You go and find a place to stay warm like the lobby at the jail, or you take a walk to get your feet warm and go to Meijer’s and sit in the lobby there.”