Crittenton General Hospital, 1554 Tuxedo, Detroit, 1949

[Lt. Dan Bassett]

Who was the nurse who sang to babies in incubators at Crittenton in 1949? I suppose she is one of the reasons opera makes me cry -- having spent my first 33 days in isolation there. Otto Grob was the doctor.
How's this for a longshot question?

[Dumpling]

Thank you for posting this! My Mom worked at Crittenton in Detroit in the lab
in the mid fifties, when Detroit was a boom town. Next time I have a chance
I will ask her. My Dad's brother's wife, my Aunt Joanne, was a nurse at
Crittenton in the year 1958. I was a healthy baby, less than one year old,
but needed a bit of face surgery [[to remove a "strawberry" birthmark), so there
I was, overnight, in the baby nursery. All were sleeping peacefully when I awoke
and discerned that I was not at home so something was very, very wrong. I
began to cry at the top of my lungs. All the other babies joined in. Aunt Joanne
came in and knew just which baby to hug and rock and all the other babies quieted
down. Aunt Joanne's Dad's last name was Rollins and he was employed by the
City of Detroit as a police officer. I think he was of Rusyn heritage from Poland/Russia
before changing his name [[absolutely of Polish/Russian heritage).
Aunt Joanne passed away a couple of years ago RIP so I can't ask her any more.

[Dumpling]

I pulled this thread up because I was trying to find the location of "Finn Town"
within Detroit proper. About two thousand Finns lived in Detroit in the forties and
fifties. This is a mere needle of people in the two million strong haystack that was
Detroit in the fifties. Another site mentions Woodrow Wilson Avenue as the heart
of "Finn Town" but...Woodrow Wilson Avenue is too long for just two thousand
people...a Finnish letter from Detroit from that era on another site gives Chalfonte
Avenue as a home address. My Mom who worked at Crittenton lived on Monterey;
my Dad lived on Collingwood. So if I had to guess where "Finn Town" was, it would
be close to where Crittenton Hospital was at that time.

[stromberg2]

Hey, Dumpling! I'm half Finn, myself.

[canuck]

Hey, Dumpling! I'm half Finn, myself.

This probably explains why Detroit's cars had prominent fins [[sic) in the fifties.

[Dumpling]

I am not Finnish myself but have a Dad that grew up in the U.P. I stepped
into a Finnish church service last summer in the U.P. and it was unsettling how
much their accents resembled my Dad's. I had never thought of him as having
a slightly Finnish accent before, no matter how many close Finnish friends he'd
had. I talked to my Mom about Crittenton. She said Joanne never worked at
Crittenton [[despite my memory - but my cousins will be able to correct me for
sure) though my grandma did work the night shift there, so it would have been
her that calmed me down.

[dtowncitylover]

Dumpling, I've finding several references to a Finnish Lutheran Church and Kaleva Hall [[the Finnish community center) being in Detroit. They also seemed to have had summer colonies on Cass Lake and Loon Lake, in the spirit of the borscht belt.

[Dumpling]

Those are good clues! Thank you, I will look into them.

[rooms222]

Those are good clues! Thank you, I will look into them.

Kaleva Home was on the short little street of Montville Place at Indianvale.

http://books.google.com/books?id=Xm4...etroit&f=false

Here are the street addresses of a bunch of Finns in Detroit in 1928 [[including a whole bunch on and around Woodrow Wilson). http://www.genealogia.fi/emi/emi3d52e.htm

The Finnish Lutheran Church at 13254 Thomson Avenue with parsonage at 1957 Buena Vista W.

http://www.genealogia.fi/emi/art/article173e.htm

Google Street View: https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3974...jQ!2e0!6m1!1e1

Purchased by the present ministry in 1965: http://www.triumphantlifecc.org/pages.asp?pageid=56624

Kaleva Hall was later at 14023 Puritan.

http://books.google.com/books?id=JcJ...etroit&f=false

I learned to swim at the Paavo Nurmi center at Suomi College back in the 70's......

[Dumpling]

Thank you for the info! Otherwise a trip to the history archives or a Finnish
Community Center would have been in order [[though that would be good for me).
I checked out some of the locations on Google Maps. Some of it has reverted to
fields.
There must have been an apartment building on Woodrow Wilson Ave. where
there is now a Joumana Kayrouz billboard for the Lodge Freeway at Davison
since so many people are listed as living there. Across the street from it, the
Streetview feature of Google maps showed a nice green "rainbow" in the air
right by the Islamic Center - it is halfway 'round the right turn off Davison curve
onto Woodrow Wilson, hope you like it. It is surely an imaging artifact but fun
anyways.

[EastsideAl]

There is still a Finnish Center in the Detroit area. It's out on 8 Mile in Farmington Hills. A close friend's grandmother, who was a Finn from the U.P., used to live in the Finnsh-American seniors community the club built just down the street from their clubhouse.

[gazhekwe]

Detroit Finnish Cooperative Summer CampAssociationmore info‎

2524 Loon Lake Road Wixom, Michigan 48393 [[248) 624-2550 Still active.

[FormerDetroiter]

Did Crittenton Hospital have anything to do with the Florence Crittenton Home for Unwed Mother's back in the 50's or 60's?

[gazhekwe]

That is exactly what it was.

[mikefmich]

Who was the nurse who sang to babies in incubators at Crittenton in 1949? I suppose she is one of the reasons opera makes me cry -- having spent my first 33 days in isolation there. Otto Grob was the doctor.
How's this for a longshot question?

Wow....this got me thinking about something I hadn't recalled in a long time. Born there in 1950, and stayed there the first 6 months of my life.

There was one special nurse there......my folks would take me back to show me off, long enough that I have a faint memory of one visit, probably 1954 or 55. Given my condition at birth & why I spent 6 months there, this nurse took me under her wing and tended to me dutifully. I wonder if this could've been the same one.