Nov

Flora Leslie, Brookside’s Dietician and Food Director

With the Thanksgiving holiday almost upon us, it is time to begin planning and preparing one of the essential parts of any celebration: food. It seems timely, then, to highlight Flora Leslie, Brookside’s long-serving dietician and food director. I would like to introduce her to you in her own voice, recalling a memory of some precarious pumpkin pies:

Floral Leslie interview with Mark Coir, Archivist (OH1990.09.28), November 5, 1987.
Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.

Hearing this story in Flora’s voice brings the memory to life in a different way than simply reading it in written form. Cranbrook Archives’ Oral History Collection holds recordings of many voices that add dynamism and richness to their stories. Flora Leslie’s interview describes her life at Cranbrook and her experience of its people and places in the mid-twentieth century.

Flora Leslie (second from left) with cooking staff at Brookside School. Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.

Born Flora MacFarlane in Alexandria, Scotland, in 1906, she made her way to the United States alone in December 1930. Journeying by ship on a very stormy sea, the passengers were required to stay below deck where they got to know each other more than they would have had they been able to wander on deck. Having worked in a photographer’s office in Scotland, Flora initially sought the same occupation in America.

But a fellow passenger Flora met aboard the ship told her that if she had no luck finding work, to contact her for employment. It is thus that Flora began to work for the Ward family in Pontiac, a family whose children were students at Cranbrook.

In 1932, Flora started working at Cranbrook, initially at Kingswood School. Flora married George Leslie in 1934, a landscaper and gardener, and later a superintendent of buildings at Cranbrook.

George Leslie (left) and Flora Leslie (right) in the garden of their apartment, the Ram’s House, at Brookside School, circa 1935. Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.

After several invitations from Jessie Winter, Headmistress of Brookside School, Flora became the dietician and food director at Brookside School, a position she held from 1934-1975. The position came with an apartment, and though at first Flora preferred to stay at Kingswood, which she describes as “light and bright and lovely,” Winter asked Flora and George back to Brookside one further time and had arranged the apartment beautifully. Most importantly, there was a brand-new Frigidaire refrigerator, a novelty in those days. As Flora recalled, seeing this small luxury she told the headmistress, “We’ll come!” The apartment was in the part of Brookside known as the ‘Ram’s House’ and had previously been occupied by Jessie Winter and by J. Robert F. Swanson.

View of the front of George and Flora Leslie’s apartment, known as the Ram’s House, circa 1935-1938. Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.

During the war years, when food was in short supply, George and Flora Leslie kept Brookside stocked with vegetables—he grew them and she canned them.

The Favorite Recipes cookbook from Brookside School, 1970.

After feeding generations of students, Flora published many of her favorite and original recipes in the Brookside cookbook, Favorite Recipes, which are still enjoyed by alumni far and wide. Perhaps you might like to try one of Flora’s original recipes this Thanksgiving, or a dessert recipe from one of the faculty families?

—Laura MacNewman, Associate Archivist, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research

Jan

Alger Munt: Cranbrook’s English Gardener

When sifting through images to post on the Center’s Facebook page, I often come across an image of someone and wonder, “How did this person end up at Cranbrook?” This week, that “someone” is Alger Munt.

Alger Munt working in the greenhouse at Cranbrook, October 1950. Photo by Harvey Croze. Courtesy Cranbrook Archives.

Algernon George Munt (“Alger”) was born in St. Albans, Hertfordshire, England in 1894. From the age of 14, he worked as a gardener on estates near his hometown. When he was 18, he started work manufacturing straw hats in one of the area factories. Soon, his country called and he joined the army, serving in the Royal Field Artillery during World War I. After the war, he did not return to the factory but resumed gardening instead.

Munt came to America in 1921 to work for his uncle William Munt in St. Clair, Michigan, in the commercial greenhouse business. He would work for his uncle for eight years. In 1926, Munt briefly returned to England to marry Grace Barker Skinner (1898-1981) of Ware, Southampton, Hampshire, England.

Munt soon tired of the greenhouse business and came to the Birmingham-Bloomfield area to become a gardener on a private estate. Based on census information and Munt’s oral history account in Cranbrook Archives, the “private estate” was Strandcrest, the estate of lumberman Carl A. Strand, which boasted 14.3 acres, fruit trees, and a caretaker’s residence.

It was in 1936 that Munt came to work at Cranbrook. He was a gardener at Cranbrook from 1936 to 1941. From October 1941 to December 1942, Munt worked at Spindletop Hall in Lexington, Kentucky.

George G. Booth had told Munt in 1941 that he didn’t want him to go but that anytime he wanted to make a change—if things did not work out in Kentucky—get in contact with him. When Spindletop Hall had to switch to economy/war-mode in 1942, Munt took Mr. Booth up on his offer and returned to Cranbrook as a gardener and part-time chauffeur. His wife Grace worked as a laundress for the Booths.

By the 1950s, Munt was the Superintendent of the Greenhouse and Grounds at Cranbrook, and his wife was working as a maid in the dormitories at Cranbrook Academy of Art.

The Munts retired from Cranbrook in August 1966 and they moved back to England, intending to settle in Cornwall. Unfortunately, Munt died suddenly in November 1966, just short of his 72^nd birthday.

–Leslie S. Mio, Associate Registrar

3 years ago Short URL 5 Comments

Archives/Cranbrook House and Gardens/George G. Booth/Oral Histories

Alger Munt/Author: Leslie Mio/Cranbrook Gardens/Gardeners/Grace Munt/Oral History/Spindletop Hall

Jun

Reel-to-Real: Archives and the Challenge of Obselete Technology

While new advancements in technology can certainly make remembering history easier, it is important not to forget what has already been done and make sure it is still accessible in the future. All organizations concerned with the preservation of culture must at some point address the problem of obsolete technology, archives chief among them.

The oral history collection at Cranbrook Archives holds fifteen recordings made on reel-to-reel magnetic audio tape that are in danger of being lost unless their content is migrated to another media source. The recordings were made between the 1950s and 1980s, with the oldest being a 1956 interview of Robert McMath, the solar astronomer who served as Cranbrook Institute of Science Board of Trustee from its founding in 1930 until 1962. Other interviews capture the wide breadth of life at Cranbrook and feature the voices of artists, craftsmen, administrative staff, teachers, and clergy, telling the story of Cranbrook’s history as it happened.

These are just a few of the reel-to-reel tapes from the collection. Justine Tobiasz/Cranbrook Archives

In partnership with Wayne State University’s Digital Media Projects Lab, we are now in the process of converting audio from the reels into digital files. The machine we’re using for this process is the Ampex ATR, which has been refurbished and modified with the record head removed to avoid accidental recording. The reels will continue to be preserved, but having another format ensures that these pieces of Cranbrook’s history will continue to live on.

Digital Media Projects Lab at Wayne State, complete with Ampex ATR. Image courtesy Wayne State University Digital Media Projects Lab.

Thank you to Wayne State for assisting us on this project, and stay tuned for future updates from the conversion process!

– Justine Tobiasz, Archives Assistant

9 years ago Short URL 2 Comments

Archives/Cranbrook Institute of Science/Oral Histories/preservation

Author: Justine Tobiasz/Digital media/Wayne State University

Sep

Old Words, New Sounds: Oral Histories from the Cranbrook Archives

For the past nine months I have been working on a project to breathe new life into an oral history initiative at Cranbrook that began as early as 1964 as a collaborative project between Cranbrook School and the Cranbrook Foundation. These oral histories give us an intimate view of life here at Cranbrook over the past half century with interviewees spanning across the entire community. They range from Dr. Lee Dice at the Institute of Science, to Cranbrook Academy of Art painter Zoltan Sepheshy, as well as interviews with members of the Vettraino family, whose time living on the grounds spanned several generations. These interviews give us the kind of glimpse into the past of Cranbrook that is difficult to find anywhere else.

Cranbrook’s oral histories are found in the archives in analogue sound formats, namely on magnetic tapes. In order to preserve these interviews and provide access to a wider audience, the Archives is implementing a plan to digitize all of the content. Each oral history is digitized in real time and then transcribed, with each hour of audio taking anywhere from 8 to 10 hours to transcribe, depending on sound quality.

One of the latest gems to be uncovered is a recording of a conversation with brother and sister James and Doris Smith who worked as model makers and production designers from the mid-1940s for many of the artists and architects associated with Cranbrook. James began working with the firm of Saarinen, Swanson, and Saarinen in 1943, while Doris joined them in 1946. Both had their hands on many of the largest projects, such as creating the models for the General Motors Technical Center, and their insight into the daily work and life in the office is unmatched and cannot be forgotten.

In the following clip you can listen to James Smith discuss events and the atmosphere that surrounded the winning entry from Eero Saarinen & Associates for the Gateway Arch in the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial in St. Louis, Missouri–better known as the St. Louis Arch.