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Dan Gilbert: "You can imagine what my grandfather did to my father." (Photo by Steve Jennings)

We know Dan Gilbert as the confident mortgage king, the owner of the Cleveland Caveliers, the real estate magnate who owns most of downtown Detroit and the guy who has a business book designed to inspire his workers.

There's also a side the public doesn't see or hear about. Ron Fournier, publisher-editor of Crain's Detroit Business, profiles Dan Gilbert the father and Dan Gilbert the son.

The tycoon, whom Fournier last fall described as part of "the downtown oligarchy," talks revealingly to the journalist about his dad -- a World War II vet who owned a bar. They weren't close, Gilbert says. 

And he tells this story: 

"My dad is 12 years old, and his brother is 10. (He) was born and raised in Detroit, a very poor neighborhood. He is delivering newspapers with his brother, and it's a foggy day, and his 10-year-old brother gets run over, and it's a priest who runs him over and kills him. It wasn't the priest's fault, and the priest is doing last rites over the body …"

Gilbert looked up from the table in his office at Quicken Loans, the mortgage company that launched his business empire and has driven a resurgence in downtown Detroit. He stared me in the eyes and continued.

"The worst part of the story: His immigrant father from Russia. He put his finger in his face and said, 'You killed your brother. You should have watched your brother.'" Gilbert shook his head in sympathy for his long-deceased dad, who would have turned 100 years old this year.

"You can imagine what my grandfather did to my father," Gilbert said. "So you can understand how anybody who experiences that kind of trauma would have a hard time getting close to anybody, including his kids."

Gilbert says he's determined to do better with his five kids. He's married to Jennifer Gilbert.

"It's almost like correcting course, and it's like correcting nature — getting back to equilibrium." Gilbert also suggested his upbringing played an indirect role in his business success.

"When you talk to successful entrepreneurs," he said, "95 percent of them come from a messed-up childhood."

In a column across the top of this week's issue, Fournier also writes about Gilbert's tight relationship he has with son Nick, 20, a junior at Michigan State University, who has who was born with neurofibromatosis, a nerve disorder that causes tumors to grow anywhere in the body. Nick has had chemotherapy and surgeries. He's nearly blind. 

Fournier is the author of a 2016 parenting best-seller just out in paperback. "Love That Boy" is about lessons learned from his son Tyler, who has Asperger Syndrome.

Michigan's lieutenant governor and two network news broadcasters are among readers who praise the groundbreaking Crain's column:

Read more: Crain's Detroit Business