August 1967
“You ran the picture of this building in your paper a few months ago. It was that building in Wyandotte.”
Sure enough, it was last May that we ran a picture in the “This Was Rochester When…” column of a building in Wyandotte where Rochester spring water was sold. A Rochester merchant, W. H. Flumerfelt, bottled up the water that flowed from a spring located behind what is now the Oak Gas Station on Main Street. He hauled it all the way to Wyandotte where it eventually had a big market.
“I used to live in Wyandotte,” Fred Lutz went on to explain. “When I was 10 years old (around 1910) I got typhoid fever. And so did a lot of other people who drank water from the Detroit River.” When it was determined that the river water resulted in typhoid, that was when Flumerfelt water took over. My mother was never without it. She even used it to cook. They did a land office business in Wyandotte,” Fred, a retired tool and die manufacturer, recalled.
So when he saw the old photo in The Clarion of Flumerfelt trucks loaded with jugs of water sitting in front of the Rochester Spring Water Building in Wyandotte, Fred returned there recently to see if the building is still there. Sure enough, it was there, somewhat modernized and now home of the Gartner Hardware.
SPEAKING OF HEALTH, several thousands of citizens went to the hospital last weekend— all smiling. I’m speaking of the dedication on Saturday and Open House Sunday for Crittenton Hospital. The Open House held before the hospital officially starts business must be the only time that so many folks can enjoy going to a hospital. In fact, once the hospital opens, crowds will no longer be permitted to roam the premises at will.
As youngsters and grown-ups toured the building and gazed into the operating rooms, nearly all remarked that they hoped to never be a customer there. Chances are, however, that those of us who spend our future years in Rochester will be logging some time on an operating tables or at least in a bed.
As youngsters and grown-ups toured the building and gazed into the operating rooms, nearly all remarked that they hoped to never be a customer there. Chances are, however, that those of us who spend our future years in Rochester will be logging some time on an operating tables or at least in a bed.
A few of the visitors were attempting to pick out the room with the best view in case they become paying guests. From the upper floors, some could pick out their homes more than a mile away, speculating that even from a hospital bed and on a clear day with binoculars, they could keep an eye on things at home.
BECAUSE THE HOSPITAL parking lot is on a slope, visitors will soon learn to keep their cars in gear or their brakes on when parked. This lesson was learned early. In fact, it was the very day that the crowd of hundreds gathered for the groundbreaking two summers ago.
The wife of a Detroit physician parked her Cadillac in the field that is now the hospital entrance. She forgot to put the car in “park” and a few minutes later it rolled downhill toward the St. John Lutheran School playground as the crowd helplessly watched. It smashed through a wire fence and stopped several yards from the school building. Of course, years from now, the parking lots will likely be so filled that no car can roll more than a few feet without crashing into another one instead of rolling down toward Walton Boulevard.
