Lakewood Lore

Long life is too busy to puzzle meaningless statistics

A birthday-card manufacturer, probably with a computer, figured out that, if you were born in 1905, by now you will have blinked 456,622,593 times and have eaten 99,437 meals.

Lakewood's busy Florence Winter Dutnell, who was born in 1905 and turned 90 last month, finds it hard to believe those statistics on a card she received. She wonders why anyone would want to take the time to total them in the first place.

Florence, one of the Westerly Apartments' original tenants (she moved into the senior center in 1974), hasn't counted the spare-time hours she has devoted over the years to her handicrafting.

"But they, too, have been many, in creating everything from baby booties to women's hats," she said.

She still gets orders for her nylon net scrubbers, used for cleaning pots and pans. She sell the scrubbers for 80 cents apiece and gives the proceeds to the Order of the Eastern Star, which she joined 63 years ago and which helps charitable causes.

Florence's roots in our community go back to 1908 when her parents, Henry and Margaret Winter, brought her here when she was 3 years old. The family moved from Cleveland s West Side to the southern part of Lakewood's Woodward Avenue, then called Kyle Avenue.

"I had to walk a mile east on unpaved Hilliard Road past two huge beehive-shaped kilns to reach my kindergarten and first-grade classrooms, in what is now the Board of Education building on Warren Road," she remembered.

The kilns, together with a long gone clay quarry and brickyard, were located just south of Hilliard, between Victoria and Elmwood streets. They belonged to Christopher Maile, son of pioneer William R. Maile, Lakewood's first brickmaker.

Later, our nonagenarian went to Madison Elementary School. At the time, a path had to be cut through undergrowth and an apple orchard, to allow pupils access to the school from Hilliard, she recalled.

"The orchard was owned by farmer Mallaly, who told us we could help ourselves to the apples -- but only those that were on the ground," she said.

"In those days, we kids were expected to go home directly from school each day to help in the family potato fields and produce gardens.

"At our place, we also had a cow, two pigs to fatten each fall for butchering, and a horse named Maude, which I rode bareback," she said. "Furthermore, we kept all kinds of chickens, as well as gray-feathered, white polka-dotted guinea fowl, which wouldn't go into the coop but preferred roosting in the trees.

"The guinea hens were wonderful watchdogs. If intruders came at night, they world make a whole lot of racket to scare them away."

One night in 1912, 7-year-old Florence was riding in her parent's light spring wagon, heading north on Rosewood near Wagar Park, when the buggy was struck from behind by an early automobile.

She fell, struck her head and was taken in a hearse driven by early undertaker Bill Daniels to Lakewood Hospital, which at the time was only a duplex house on the southeast corner of Detroit and Belle avenues.

"I had a concussion. It caused me to wear glasses thereafter," she said.

Florence entered Lakewood High School when it still was under construction.

"At first, there was no cafeteria at the school, so we had to eat on plank tables in the basement of the main building," she recollected.

Later, Florence had thoughts of going on to the Cleveland School of Art because she always liked to draw. Instead, being an only child, she was drafted to become a second chef to her father who, meanwhile, had acquired a small restaurant at the end of Detroit near Riverside Drive.

"Harold Dutnell came in to eat every day, and that was how I met my husband," she said.

They were married in 1926. Harold, who became an assistant buyer for George Worthington Wholesale Hardware and Plumbing Co., died in 1968 at age 69. Florence has two sons, five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

In her fledging years, she joined Lakewood's first church. It was situated on the northeast corner of Detroit and Andrews, and dated back to 1848. It was called the First New Jerusalem Church of Rockport and was of Swedenborgian faith.

Its original building was moved to the rear of the corner property early this century, then razed 24 yeas ago to make room for an addition to the United Latvian Evangelical Lutheran Church, the current occupant of the historic site.

Florence had a happy childhood and recalls how an early incident reinforced her lifelong habit of trusting in God.

While walking to church one Sunday, young Florence found a penny in a rut on Hilliard.

"I was so glad," she said, "because I had forgotten my Sunday School money that day and I knew now that God had answered my prayer."

This article appeared in the Lakewood Sun Post July 13, 1995. Reprinted with permission.

[Note: Florence May Dutnell passed away in April, 1997. An obituary appeared in the Plain Dealer April 15, 1997.]

More Lakewood Lore