#6 Fritzie: Growing up

23/07/2013 by Lesley

There is a darker yelllow where Frieda is sitting.

I can remember that everyday when we sisters came home from school there was a fresh round loaf of rye bread with jam for us to snack on. I think my mother would get the rye bread fresh from the bakery every day. One thing I remember very clearly, when I was 12, that on Saturdays we sisters spent the day cleaning at home while my mother and Aunt Gretchen went to matinees at the Bonstelle Playhouse or any other matinees playing in town. They had a wonderful time together. My mother loved to go and she dressed up like a Lady and really was a Lady going out.

Between Josephine and I, we got all the work done with the other girls helping. My sister Bertha never wanted to do house work. I can remember Josephine, who was the oldest, would get real mad at her. Gretchen was usually deep in dance lessons, when all this was going on.

I don’t remember much about when we were young. In general, we went to school, and did things together.

One thing I do remember, was when I learned to write long hand, a second time, very prettily. There were glass doors at our school and one day I put my hand on the glass and it went straight through! I had to have my wrist fixed up and when it all recovered, there was this lump on the inside of my wrist. So, for the rest of my life, people would ask me why I had that lump there. I had to learn to write all over again from the beginning. (You will note in a few places in this story, Frieda’s hand writing that was very very fine.)

The two families would get together for picnics on a regular basis. Either in our back yard or theirs. Gretchen didn’t take part in the eating on these occasions in order to keep her ballet figure. She watched her weight very closely even at an early age, because of her dancing.

It was Gretchen who chose me to go out to dinner with them early on. We were close friends, Gretchen and I. She shared her feelings and dreams with me and I with her. But it was different than now-a-days. We didn’t have a lot of time to converse and share our secrets when we were growing up. Gretchen was more the out going one and I tagged along. Since she was a year younger than I, we didn’t go to the same classes in school and I don’t remember going back and forth to school with her. She had lots of home work to do after school; piano lessons from her mother and ballet practice. I eventually had three younger sisters to take care of after school and other duties. I went to watch her in ballet class some times, but I just wanted to watch. So we were both very busy with our own things growing up.

Gretchen was very preoccupied with her dancing. She took ballet lessons. And she was very good at it. She went to Olga Fricker’s Ballet School and eventually, by the time we were teenagers, became one of the principle dancers and a soloist in the Concert Group of Miss Fricker’s Dancing school which was connected to the Bonstelle Playhouse in Detroit. When I was twenty I got a job making costumes for Miss Fricker’s ballet company. That’s when I took lessons there, too, so that I could understand more about how to make the costumes.

Gretchen’s mother used to make costumes for her. The one that I remember particularly, that I had a picture of, was a butterfly costume with wings – a white satin butterfly. During World War I, Aunt Gretchen sold liberty Bonds and to do this she would set up entertainment programs for people to watch. She would plan the whole thing and she would have Gretchen perform solo dances in her butterfly costume.

Eventually both families moved away from Gratiot Avenue. The Haveman’s moved to the north side of town and we moved to Southfield Road in a house on 10 acres of land where wild strawberries grew in the woods. I can remember on Sundays when maybe 25 of our relatives would come out to our house to pick wild strawberries in the woods and stay for dinner. I can still see them now, maybe 20 aunts and cousins would sit in a row in the kitchen against the wall watching me washing the dishes singing “I’m forever blowing bubbles. Pretty bubbles in the air……” I was always washing the dishes. My sister Josephine was always on a date. My immediate younger sister Bertha was always studying and I was always washing the dishes or taking care of my three younger sisters.

I went to Northern High school. At the time, we lived 5 1/2 miles from the nearest public bus stop. So my father bought a car and gave each of us, who were old enough, a chance to learn to drive it. Then he decided that I would be the regular driver. So it was my job, every morning, to drive us to the bus stop and park the car there and catch the bus to school.

#8 Fritzie: My Early Influences – How I got my Professional Name

21/07/2013 by Lesley

My mother was of course the one who taught me how to sew, so she was very important in my beginnings. When my sisters and I needed a new dress, I helped her make them or I made them myself by the time I was 12 years old.

Mother made our winter coats and during World War I, she made my sister Josephine and I military style coats out of Astrakhan (a fake fur material). And we had military caps to go with the coats; the kind that fold flat and can be slipped into a coat pocket. During this time my Uncle Alex who was going to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor took Jo and I to our first Football game all dressed up in our Astrakhan military coats and caps. I think it was Michigan playing St. Louis.

Mrs. Haveman was another one of the earliest influences on my life. Years later when I began to sew and make clothes for Josephine and I, and the other sisters, Mrs. Haveman, Aunt Gretchen said to me, “You’re very good at that. You really ought to make that your profession, designing and making clothes.” And she said, “When you get old enough to do this, I will help you.” And that was very important to me. Because I felt that my own mother couldn’t help me make it my profession. It was Aunt Gretchen who suggested that my professional fashion designer name be “Madame Fritzie”.

One year Aunt Gretchen gave us 3 or 4 coats that she didn’t need any more; one for each of us. I don’t remember what Josephine or Bert’s looked like, but mine was very elegant – brown with an edge of fur going down the front and all around the bottom edge, around the back.

But Aunt Gretchen gave me the feeling that she could give me the tools to start me in business and that was something my mother couldn’t do. By that time I was one of seven daughters and my mother didn’t have time to learn very much about the business world. For one thing she never bought clothes in a store. Mrs. Haveman did and she knew what was needed in the way of clothes that were to be sold in stores. She had a sense of how fashions changed.

So early on, I developed a great affection for Aunt Gretchen and to some extent became her confidant, someone that she could talk to. Her parents, Gretchen’s grandparents, lived with them. Aunt Gretchen was often depressed about the association with her parents. All she got was complaints about how she didn’t do this and she didn’t do that and that wasn’t right and this wasn’t right. And she would tell me about all this. I don’t know why. I must have been older than 12, or she wouldn’t have talked to me about it. Whenever there was an argument, she’d tell me about it. I was sorry for her, and happy to listen. But there was nothing I could really do to help her.

Anyhow, by the time I was 15 or 16, I realized that Aunt Gretchen wasn’t very happy with her husband, either. I didn’t have anything specific to base this on, just a feeling. And besides I could see how much she enjoyed the attentions of my Uncle Louie. Uncle Louie was very handsome and a real womanizer. They had a very good time together. He was younger. Mr. Haveman was a big heavy set man and older than she was; a real German Prussian type. Anyway, she had a marvelous time with Uncle Louie. So what could I know, at 15.

#10 Polly: The Fire

19/07/2013 by Lesley

One October evening Dad came home and announced that we would be going to Temple after supper. It was Succoth, a Jewish harvest festival, and there would be a special ceremony and treats for the children. The synagogue was about 15 miles from our house, which resulted in our not going there very often. But when Dad decided to go, we went.

On the way home, we noticed a bright light as we neared eight mile road. By the time we reached our driveway, we already realized the glare was our house, engulfed in flames! Dad dropped us off across the street and raced back to eight mile road where the Wayne county fire station was located. He said that he plunked down a hundred dollar bill and asked them to come with their equipment and save our house. He was told that he lived in Oakland County and would have to be serviced from Birmingham which was fifteen miles away. They would make the call. He returned, and we all watched the flames devour the inside of our brick house.

After what seemed to be a long time, we heard the sirens approaching from the north. As the fire truck made the approach to our driveway, it got stuck too far away from the house for the hoses to reach. The firemen piled out of the truck and began breaking the windows and smashing the glass front door – helping the flames burn even hotter. We soon saw that their efforts were worse than hopeless and watched the two upper floors collapse into the basement. I think I was sent to a neighbor’s to phone Aunt Regina to ask them to come and get us and to bring some blankets because Dad said he would not leave the premises and Mother was determined to stay with him. The firemen poked around the exterior for a while and then had to tend to the problem of their truck and left the smoldering remains. Aunt Regina and her husband took we three children to their house.

Dad was concerned about the safe which, undoubtedly, had fallen into the basement along with the contents of the house. Somehow, Mother and Dad hunkered down somewhere where they could keep warm and also keep watch. Dad’s premonitions proved to be correct; some time during the night they heard noises. Dad had armed himself and before long several of the “firemen” appeared, presumably to loot. Dad threatened them with his weapon and they took off.

With nothing but the clothes on our backs, Dad found a house for us to rent near the butcher shop and Maxine, Viola, and I could walk to school while our house on Southfield rd. was being rebuilt.

This story is rather interesting.
In the years before “the Depression of 1929” there was a great deal of Anti-immigration
sentiment which had increased after World War I (1918) and continued to increase. Economic concerns combined with ethnic prejudice ended America’s “open door” immigration policy in the 1920s.
I wonder if the fire at my grandparent’s house was part of this Anti-immigration sentiment of that period, even though they had already been in this country for a decade.

#13 Fritzie: Socializing with the young people in Allenford in 1925

16/07/2013 by Lesley

Gretchen and I wanted to get to know the young people in town, so we took the road around Chesley Lake and walked to the presbyterian church in Allenford on Sunday mornings. The choir master greeted us very kindly and we were recruited for the church choir. Eventually, however, the choir master discovered that I did not have a voice and asked me not to sing, but to mouth the words with no sound, so I could remain in the choir. I did not mind as long as I could stay in the choir.

At first, when we got to Allenford, we were considered stuck-up city girls, but the young people soon learned to like us, and we liked them a lot, and we were allowed to join the group. In Allenford, there was a big group of teenagers that did everything together as a group. There wasn’t so much dating in those days.

We went to all the baseball games in Allenford. This is one of the things everyone did together. Aunt Gretchen and the two of us always wore the same dresses. She wore a white polka dotted dress with a pink background. Gretchen’s dress was blue with white polka dots and mine was violet with white polka dots. They were our baseball dresses each with a sash to match. I had made them all.

The baseball games in Allenford were very important because it looked like the team had a chance at winning the Canadian Farm Baseball Championship award. And that was important to us, because Gretchen’s father had told the team that if they won, he would sponsor the Championship dance to celebrate their victory. It was to be given in their big barn and he would pay for the band and everything.

By this time, Gretchen was dating both the Pitcher, Norman Wayne and the Catcher, Percival Noble, who when he grew up became a member of the Canadian Parliament. I was dating, Garnett E. Montgomery, the Postmaster’s son. He delivered mail, too, by horse and buggy in the afternoon and often invited me to join him for the ride and each time I went with him, he presented me with a bouquet of sweet peas. They grew in his mother’s garden.

We wore the same dresses, which I had made, to the baseball games and the square dance socials. And each girl had to bake a pie. Gretchen baked mine and her’s. They were always butterscotch pies with whipped cream topping and everyone knew that they were the best. Then at the social the boys had to buy the pies and they would get the girl to eat it with them. Usually there was a “box supper” that went with the pie.

You can imagine how excited Gretchen and I were when the boys won the Baseball Championship and we actually had the big dance in the big barn. Gretchen and I helped Aunt Gretchen make all the food for the big occasion. We made fried chicken, potato salad, vegetables and cakes. That was the first time I ever made mayonnaise from scratch.

It got cold in October and November and the lake was frozen. On Sunday we walked to town across the lake and we loved it. Some days it was very cold, like 35F below zero (-37.22 °C), but we did it so we could get a ride home after church and sometimes we were invited for dinner by some of the girls and boys or we invited them home to our house. It worked out very well.

And in the winter time we went with the gang to all the hockey games with the hockey team. They used a big sled. In Allenford in the 1920’s the only form of transportation in the winter was by sleigh. We went in a big sled that had straw on the floor and had enough room in it for the hockey players and all the young people of Allenford; the cheering squad! We always kept on the main roads since the side roads were pretty narrow and our sled was so big. To make sure that we got to the games on time, the driver would sometimes pretend that we were a “funeral sleigh”. He’d tell us all to be real quiet, and cut out the teenage ruckus and then he’d signal the other sleigh that we were a funeral sleigh and they’d let us go right through. We were never late for a game!

#15 Polly: Fritzie’s many Influences on me & dresses she made for me

14/07/2013 by Lesley

Many, Many Artistic endeavors……….

**The signature confuses me. I always thought that my mother made the linoleum cut. For sure she held on to this all these years…….**

Around the time I started high school, my older sister Frieda, who was already called Fritzie most of the time, began working for Olga Fricker at her School of Ballet, as the costume designer. Fritizie lived in her studio on the top floor of the school which was a three story building on Cass Avenue near Wayne University. Fritzie and I had become better acquainted with each other and were then very good friends: I found in her someone I could talk to and she was very supportive. I let her know how lonely I was living in the “boonies”, at home.. She made arrangements with Olga Fricker to let me join an after school ballet class and pay for it by being responsible for keeping Olga’s office clean.

I enjoyed the ballet classes; I worked hard and made enough progress to be in a recital. Most thrilling of all, I was included in the group that auditioned to be extras on stage with the Corp de Ballet Russe for a performance of “Petrushka” starring Balanchine. And I was one of those chosen!

Then, at Christmas time, after I had advanced to dancing “on toe” I was included in a group that was booked at a downtown theater to perform an “interval” where a Shirley Temple movie “The Littlest Colonel” was being featured. This was two weeks of “showbiz”; three performances a day! full of grease paint! costumes! music! and waiting……… I think I saw the Shirley Temple movie twenty times.

(dancing in “The Littlest Colonel”)

I also began to take voice lessons, learning excerpts from Shakespeare, etc. I was a stagestruck kid. My bedroom was plastered with pictures of Lunt and Fontaine.

When recital time came around and Fritzie became very busy in the costume department, I became her go-fer and all around assistant: standing in for the “dummy” (Mannequin, dress form) while patterns were fitted; going to the fabric store to match materials and thread and trimmings; putting together a hurried snack at any time of the day or night when the pressure was on. Many times I just spent the night at the studio and would catch the bus to school in the morning. And Fritzie rewarded me by taking me to plays, such as “the Women” by Clare Boothe Luce, which raised questions about sex and society for me. And Fritzie was there to answer my questions. I had never been able to talk about my personal questions with my mother. She was very shy, unable to cope with subjects like sex or personal hygiene. And personal discussions never seemed to be appropriate during the time I spent with Bertha, one of my other older sisters. Sometimes Bertha would take me with her to her Art Class at Wayne and I “felt big” when she did. Somehow, my relationship with Fritzie was more like being an equal rather than being the “little sister”.

At the beginning of my sophomore year, Fritzie presented me with a special gift: two lovely raspberry red outfits. One was a long sleeved wool crepe, a rather, dressy dress. The other, a sporty pin whale corduroy shirt dress. I was delighted. My wardrobe had always consisted of hand-me-downs or things I had made myself and I was not a faultless seamstress.

Between my junior and senior years of high school, 1936, I applied for a drama Scholarship that was being offered at Northwestern University, and I got it. When I was awarded the scholarship to be a “Cherub” (the name given to the students in this program), Fritzie immediately came forward by putting together my wardrobe. She made a spectacular organdy formal (one of the requisites in the brochure) to be worn at the competition that was to be held at the end of the session. The dress was perfect for the occasion; very feminine; a hyacinth blue organdy penner entirely edged with matching ruffles over a blue taffeta slip.

……….By this time, summer 1937, Fritzie had her own business designing women’s clothes in Gross Pointe, an upscale suburb of Detroit. ……….

It was Fritzie who persuaded me to apply to Antioch College. I had thought I would like to go to a women’s college because that is where my high school friends had applied. Fritzie’s comment was, “Growing up with six sisters, why the hell would you want to go to a girl’s school?”. But she also had an alternative for me to consider. The daughter of her friends, Ralph and Clara Holmes (Ralph was the drama critic on the staff of the Detroit Times) was attending Antioch College in Ohio, and was very enthusiastic about it. It had a unique work-study program and was a small school. Fritzie arranged for me to spend a weekend at the school and financed the trip. I was hooked after that experience and determined to fulfill my part in the bargain I made with Dad and see to it that he kept his part. In the summer of 1939, word came that I had been accepted with advance credit for my courses at Wayne State University and also work credit, with a small stipend toward my tuition.

Fritzie made me a very collegiate blue plaid pleated skirt that I wore for years.

Many times, my aunt Polly would tell us about the prom dresses that my mother made for her. Polly would write to Fritzie and mention the date of the dance, and on the very day of the dance a package would show up with a dress that fit Polly perfectly.

#18 Fritzie: Fall 1940, Looking for a fashion job in the Big City

11/07/2013 by Lesley

Finally we arrived in the Big City of New York, to look for work…

Eve Marie and I found an apartment in Greenwich Village for a month.

I found a job in a dress shop doing alterations.

Eve Marie’s job hunting escapades were fantastic and exasperating. She was born in Germany originally and this was during World War II and she was considered an enemy alien. She was trying everywhere with no luck.

One time she was supposed to go to an interview in a man’s hotel room and she was suspicious of the set up. So she asked me to wait in the hotel lobby and if she didn’t appear after a certain amount of time, I was supposed to go looking for her. Well the man turned out to be a real gentleman, with a very interesting job to offer her and her qualifications were perfect, except for her alien status and she didn’t get the job.

At the very end, I tried again to find a job at Valentina’s fashion design house and others, but it was summer, 1940 – the war and there was very little going on and since I had no documented experience in fashion design to speak of; no references, no resume, no one was ready to hire me right away.

We had to leave New York City…………………..

We had enough money to keep the apartment for a month, but at the end of the month Eve Marie still hadn’t found a job and we had to go our separate ways.

I went back to Detroit, Michigan and Eve Marie went back to live with her parents in Tampa, Florida.

Years later, when her daughter was already 10 years old, we saw each other again. We were both married by then. We had a good time reminiscing about our Summer at the Mount Washington Hotel and our time in the Big City.

#19 The Early 1940’s; More experience for her resume’

10/07/2013 by Lesley

Fritzie must have gone back to Detroit and continued to work as a fashion designer making clothes for women in the affluent Detroit area.

She was doing at least some freelance work……………..

Fritzie writes on the side there: “Miss Crawford’s dress – Designed and Made by Fritzie“

1942

It appears that as the USA entered WWII, Fritzie was working for various fashion companies in Detroit. A claim from the Michigan Unemployment Compensation Commission shows that she was collecting unemployment compensation after being laid off at; DEM RY & Co., Winkelman Bros. Inc., and Ann Chumery Custom Clothes…..most likely because orders were not coming in and companies had to lay off employees right and left.

Then she started to work in the war effort……………….

#20 From 1943 ….. onward, Charm, Style with Fashion and her own family

07/07/2013 by Lesley

In 1943 Fritzie got married.

The story goes, that this friend of the family who met Polly at Antioch college, Fred Pollak, asked each of the still single girls in the Politzer family to marry him. If I remember he started with Polly, who said no. Then he asked each of the other two younger sisters and they said no. I really do not know how many of them were still single, but finally he asked my mother and my mother said yes.

Fred was one of these guys who had a Clark Gabble look to him and I believe my mother was very very taken with him and very happy to be married to him.

After their wedding they moved to Chicago, Illinois.

From this time forward Fritzie was for the most part a housewife and mother, but continued to make lots of our clothes.

I was born in 1943 and my brothers were born in 1945, Ralph Timothy and in 1948, Victor Alfonse. The family kept moving farther north in the Chicago area and we were mostly raised in the first suburb north of Chicago, Evanston, IL.

Thus begins that part of the exhibition showing my mother’s charm, style and in many cases the clothes that she made for herself and her children as we grew up……………..

#22 1950’s….some foreign influence

04/07/2013 by Lesley

Fritzie continued to make clothes for our family thru the 1950’s.

It could have been in the late 1940’s when there was still a baby in the family that Fritzie designed an apron/cape made of a quilted plastic material that went over the shoulder and was used for burping babies. I think there was some attempt on my parent’s part to commercialize the idea, but it never took off.

Mom’s sewing still continued during the ’50’s………..

Fritzie’s earlier dependence upon making a living by sewing, making clothes for her sisters, for other women and, of course, for herself and her children carried with it a stigma in later years, that she later rebelled against in her own way, wanting to have store bought clothes. She often came back from a shopping trip, of any kind, during which she saw many articles of clothing she would have liked to buy, by saying, “I saved $500 today!”

In the 1950’s our family traveled to foreign countries……………………..
the summer of 1954 in Mexico and

in 1956-57, our father took us all to live in Vienna, Austria for a year and a half. His home town.

During our time in Austria, we also traveled to Israel to visit my father’s sister Annie and her family.

Ami and Itzik on the left, Eitan and Ran on the right

Then we were back in Evanston, IL through high school and onward…………..

#23 The 1960’s and 1970’s … business & fashion

02/07/2013 by Lesley

Hats!

Fritzie enjoyed Hats very much. It is clear that she took great pleasure wearing hats and made some of the hats she wore. When she made Ballet costomes, head dresses, must have been part of her work.

The hats and beehives era of the 60’s and 70’s were also the years when we children were finishing high school, going to college and in general leaving the family nucleus.

She found it possible to abandon her sewing more and more, but her flair for fashion was always there. Her charm, elegance and poise were ever with her…………..

For Fritzie it was the time for her to be more and more involved with her husband, his activities and his business. They worked together, they traveled together, they socialized together.

#25 1990’s

25/06/2013 by Lesley

In the 1990’s, Fritzie spent 7 years living in a senior residence near my middle brother Tim, in the Denver, Colorado area. Tim & his wife, Ruth, took on the day care role and my youngest brother, Victor who lived nearby in Salt Lake City, visited her with his family often. She was very happy to have this time with her sons.

They made sure that she was cared for, took her on outings, were in constant communication with her, were there in cases of emergency and… among other things made sure that she had her sewing machine with her. When she did use it, she still showed a flare for design, color and style.

Madame Fritzie

celebrating a woman's creativity

Category Archives: Clothing