By: Kathryn Pentiuk | C&G Newspapers | Published October 31, 2024
BIRMINGHAM/SOUTHFIELD — Father Chris Yaw, the rector at St. David’s Episcopal Church in Southfield, said that his 88-year-old dad has a great sense of humor. When asked how many children he has, he’ll respond, “Four ... so far.”
Chris Yaw spoke at St. Anne’s Mead 2024 Breakfast with the Bishop: Compelling Stories of a Great Generation Oct. 9 at The Community House of Birmingham, featuring the impactful stories of St. Anne’s Mead residents.
St. Anne’s Mead is a nonprofit located in Southfield that provides assisted living, extended care and memory care.
Marie Osborne of WJR News/Talk 760-AM, who emceed the event, thanked the attendees.
“This event of St. Anne’s program helps raise critical funding and awareness for one of the area’s most premiere interfaith nonprofit assisted living and memory care homes. You helped build a memory care home, raise the roof, refresh the rooms, support residents in need, and now you’re making the Mead makeover possible, as the assisted living home common areas are being refreshed and modernized. The Mead makeover launched in December 2023, and the campaign’s at 25% of its $400,000 goal,” she said.
The event helped to raise $25,000 toward the renovation project.
Bishop Bonnie Perry of the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan hosted a Johnny Carson-style “Tonight Show,” where she interviewed the family members and friends of two past residents and two current residents. Chris Yaw shared the story of his father, who is a current resident at St. Anne’s Mead and the former owner of the Yaw Art Gallery in Birmingham, whose framing work is on display in the Detroit Institute of Arts.
Jim Yaw’s humor is evident in the story of how he met his wife of 66 years, Nancy Yaw, who passed away in 2015.
“My dad and his brother had a Pogo speedboat, and it was at the end of a dock, and their cousins had invited some young ladies to come join them on a Saturday,” Chris Yaw said.
“So my dad and my uncle Bill were in the boat at the end of the dock, and they were trying to start the engine, and the engine just would not start. And my dad, to this day, knows very little about motors.
“So he walked into the little boat there and there was a pipe, and he said, ‘Well, what’s this doing here?’ And as my mom and her friend were walking up the dock, he chucked it over his shoulder, and he conked my mom in the head, and she fell in the water, and that’s how they met.”
After befriending some people in France, the Yaws decided to bring contemporary art to Birmingham. They first opened in Jacobson’s Department Store. In 1966, the two had their first Picasso show, where they sold prints and ceramics around the department store.
“My mom’s conviction was that there are a lot of artists who are underrepresented, and there are a lot of young artists that, you know, just need a place to show their skills. So, for 47 years, she invited famous and not-so-famous people to come in. And she saw jewelry and ceramics and prints and, gosh, antiques from all over the world, but really, a team, both of them together. And so dad worked in the picture framing part. So, he would frame pictures that people would bring. And you know how you go to the dry cleaners and sometimes they have all these clothes that nobody ever picked up? We have a lot of the art that people never picked up when they closed after 47 years,” Chris Yaw joked.
Kathleen Turland, accompanied by Elizabeth Briody and Marc Robinson, shared the story of her late mother, an Oakland County public health nurse who died in 2020, Joyce Turland. Before Joyce Turland was a resident at St. Anne’s Mead, she was on the board there.
“She would talk about how much she liked the Mead and all the different things they were doing, and what a fabulous organization of caregivers, and it was very important to her,” Kathleen Turland said.
It was Joyce Turland’s passion for St. Anne’s Mead that got her friends, Elizabeth Briody and Marc Robinson, to join the board. Years later, after Joyce Turland’s husband passed away, she sold her home and went into assisted living at a different facility when her daughter realized that the care wasn’t what her mother needed.
Kathleen Turland shared that everything came full circle when, at 8 a.m. Dec. 26, 2017, after she landed in Michigan, she drove straight to St. Anne’s Mead without a plan. She called and asked if they could give her a tour, and they did on the spot.
One month later, her mom moved in. While moving her mom in, she ran into an old friend she’d known as a child whose mom had the room before and had just passed away. Kathleen Turland said that moment made her feel like it was the right place.
Buddy Fenster shared the story of his late mother, Lillian Fenster, a Holocaust survivor who lost all her family by the time she was around 16 years old.
“She was a very strong person. I think that’s what saved her. She’s probably the living embodiment of what World War II was for Jewish people. In September of ’39, she took shrapnel right away in the first bombing of Warsaw when she was 13.”
Buddy Fenster shared that the Nazis moved her family into what would become the Warsaw Ghetto.
“The concentration camps hadn’t been built yet, so they were just bringing Jews in from all over the area, and at one time, it could have been between 400,000 and 500,000 people in that. They put a family in a cellar. It was leaking. She says it was always leaking. And no food came in, no medicine came in, and they were told, if you’re found outside of this ghetto, you’ll be shot.”
As the oldest of four daughters, she witnessed her youngest sister die of starvation, and her parents wrapped the body in newspaper and placed her on the curb with the other dead bodies.
Buddy Fenster shared that his mother was able to escape when she was 15 by moving the loose bricks and squeezing out. After making it to her aunt’s house 50 miles away, she began to miss her family, so she went back to Warsaw.
“I don’t know how long the time period was between when she left initially and came back, but the only one left was her mother,” he said.
“Her sisters had died, and her father, my grandfather, had gone into the sewers to work with the underground. So she took her mother back to the village and was able to spend a very short period of time with her, because one day when she was out in the fields working, the Nazis had come to round up that village, and they put them on trucks, and I think the destination was Treblinka.
“And so, at that stage of my mother’s life, she was maybe 16 or 17. She was alone, and so she decided, ‘I’m going to create a fake identification for myself.’ She had blonde hair and blue eyes. She spoke Polish very well. And she learned a few things about the Catholic Mass.
“So she called herself Helena, and she was an orphan. ‘I’m a Christian orphan. If I can work on your farm, will you let me sleep in your barn?’ And that’s pretty much how she survived the war until liberation. The Russians liberated the eastern part of Poland, probably at the end of 1944.”
Chris Crawford shared the story of his godmother, 104-year-old Hester Crawford, who came to St. Anne’s Mead right before her 100th birthday. Hester Crawford’s parents met in Detroit, and she was born on Aug. 18, 1920, in Dawson Springs, Kentucky, which is home to mineral springs. She found herself back in Detroit when she was visiting to tell friends that she was moving to Toledo but liked Michigan so much that she ended up staying.
“Hester’s worked many jobs over the years, but the coolest one, the one she talks most about, was in 1940 during the World War,” Chris Crawford said. “Hester was one of the original Rosie the Riveters. She actually worked on the B-24 bombers.”
Hester Crawford shared that she worked on one of the wings of the plane. She said that she made “$1 plus, not as much as $1 and a half.”
Perry asked Hester Crawford what she did with the money, and she replied, “Oh, I don’t know. I spent it. What do you think?”
Chris Crawford added, “She loves clothes. She loves to go shopping. Used to go to Hudson’s and Siegel’s and some of those stores and get some really nice clothes and shoes.”
Perry asked Hester Crawford what the secret of her longevity is, and she said, “I have no idea.” Hester Crawford said that in her lifetime everything has changed. “Nothing is the same.”
For more information on St. Anne’s Mead, visit stannesmead.org.