Notes for: Grace ("Gracie") Adelia Bodine
By 1920, just Anna, her mother, and Grace were living together. Grace worked in the office of a dry cleaner shop.
Article in Battle Creek, Michigan, newspaper on February 1, 1948. the title may have been "Manily About Folks."
Most women in their 70s would, if given a 30-days notice to vacate their place of business, just fold up and sigh, "What's the use?" But not Grace A. Bodine - long known officially as Economy Cleaners. Monday she will open business at a new stand measurable in feet from the store at 85 Calhoun street which she has operated for the past 17 years. She will be in competition with the tenant who succeeded her in the old site.
When the firm known as Bodine Bros., at 36 Northwest Capital avenue, dissolved in 1930, Miss Bodine, who had been with it for20 years, decided to carry on. She acquired a building at 97 Calhoun street (now occupied by ? ice cream establishment) and opened a cleaning business. A year later she moved to George Forster's property at what is now 85 Calhoun, but was then 87, and adjusted herself to smaller quarters, sending most of her cleaning business to Noman Grein, at the Columbia Cleaners and doing pressing, repairing and the like at the downtown store. After 17 years she was notified recently to vacate within 30 days, the place having been leased to the Calhoun Cleaners (Sam Weiss). Instead of retiring, she acquired the building at 471/2 Calhoun, occupied by Miss Nettie Westerman as a gift shop. Miss Westerman retired, to devote her time to care for her aged mother. It is in this place, remodelled and redecorated, that Miss Bodine will resume business Monday.
The Bodine family has played an important part in the history of Battle Creek. Its head, John Howard Bodine, who came to the community as a contractor long before the Civil war, built some of the finest homes on Maple street (now Northwest Capital avenue). In fact, he died as the result of a fall from a scaffold at the Skinner residence, gangrene having developed.
When John Howard Bodine came to Battle Creek, his son, Frank, was only nine years old. Frank spent most of his life here, becoming a well known merchant tailor. Among his customers was Hon. E. C. Nichols, Hon. Charles Austin, Hon. E. C. Hinman, Dr. w. L. Godfrey, Dr. B. P. Graves, Irving L. Stone, Peter Hoffmaster - and a whole horde of Grand Trunk men. He was for years in A. M. Minty's frame block over the mill-race - in fact, next door to the Minty cigar store. Then he moved to the Thomas block, over the Central National bank (now the Liggett drug store). At one stage of his early manhood he went to Mississippi, where he met a New York girl, Anna Eastmead, and they were married. Anna was the daughter of a shipbuilder (of the English Ploughman family). She came to Battle Creek as a bride.
Grace Adelia Bodine was born to Frank and Anna Bodine January 28, 1877, when the family was living on Hall street, near Beach (now Elm). She had four brothers and a sister, of whom three brothers still survive; Floyd, who lives at 105 North Wabash, and has a penchant for wintering in Florida; George, who was Floyd's partner in Bodine Bros., but who now runs a cleaning business in Grand Rapids, and William, who is in the cleaning business at Ann Arbor.
Started in No. 2 School
Grace's first school was old No. 2 on Green street, but she changed to No. 4 school when the family moved to Fountain street. Eventually she moved to No. 1, McCamly and Champion streets, to enter high school. In charge at that time was Professor Cobb, father of Mrs. Lillian (Frank E.) Bechmann. She recalls many of her schoolmates, but particularly Will Duffy and Blanche Halladay (Mrs. Hillard E. Lyle of Detroit), because they sang so beautifully. She did not finish high school. Before her junior year she entered her father's tailor shop and for a dozen years helped him, as seamstress, make clothes fro the best know men in Battle Creek. She remembers how Dr. Graves, and one or two others, liked lots of silk braid on each double-breasted frock coat, which was then the badge of a professional man.
Miss Bodine also remembers how her father "played safe" with his railroad customers, requiring a deposit that would pay for the goods and from then on endeavoring to collect on pay-days before the men got into other spending places. Some them, it seems, liked to celebrate pay-day in the saloons. As a matter of fact, it was not unusual for Bodine's customers to bring in pails of beer while waiting for measurements or a try-on. Bodine never drank, never smoked, and never swore. But he was tolerant of those who did.
Hitching Post Days
Those were the days of cobblestone pavements and of hitching posts on Main street. McCrea's grocery at Main and Canal (Monroe now) was a rival to C. R. Thompson's, where the gas office now stands. The Bodine family was pleased when Reynolds & Ashley took over McCrea's, as Mrs. Eugene Reynolds was a sister of Grace's father.
The town changed much while Grace Bodine sewed on her father's tailor-made suits. Brick payment succeeded cobble stones, electric trolleys succeeded horse-drawn street-cars, and hitching posts gradually disappeared. But Frank Bodine remained the tailor for 35 years. At times he employed from 10 to 12 men.
Another change that was being made was from steam-cleaning of clothes to dry cleaning. Floyd and George Bodine worked for Godfrey Stuckle (the Battle Creek Cleaners, now run by William Stuckle), drawing $1 a pay day for their work. Then they decided to launch a business of their own, which they called Bodine Bros. Sister Grace joined them, to take charge of the office. She had acquired a workable knowledge of bookkeeping in her father's tailor shop. She stayed on the job for 20 years - in fact, until the brothers decided to dissolve. This is when Grace Bodine went in business for herself, on Calhoun street.
Baptist Church Member
Throughout the years Grace Bodine had been closely affiliated with teh First Baptist church. She taught in the Sunday school, downtown and at the Lake avenue mission, and she sang in the choir (soprano). Grace's mother was one of the three paid singers in a New York Episcopal church and most of her children inherited a little music from her. George, now of Grand Rapids, used to sing tenor at the Majestic, in the days when Glenn A. Cross made the ladies weep (and come again) with his "Love Me and the World is Mine." Others who helped "spell" Mr. Cross were Duane Van Buren, Casper Flagg and Charles Winslow. Grave loved to go to the Majestic and she still is a good "movie" fan. Her treat of the past week was "My Wild Irish Rose," dealing, in technicolor, with the life of Chauncey Olcott, whom she used to see in person at Hamblin's opera house and in teh earlier days of the Post.
Saturday afternoons invariably find her at the radio, listening to the Metropolitan Opera Co.'s broadcasts. She admits that she also uses the radio frequently for "soap operas" and she in an especially ardent fan for news broadcasts. She has radios at home and at the store.
Miss Bodine's home has for some time been at 73 Arthur street, with her nephew, Charles E. Bodine (son of the last Frank, Jr.), and his wife, Leva. But during the past week Mrs. Bodine was stricken with a cerebral hemmorhage, while shopping downtown, dying a few hours later. This will result in readjustment. Charles Bodine, now with the Consumers' Power Co., was a presser in Aunt Grace's shop before the late war caused him to turn to a more "essential" type of work.
Parents Died 30 Years Ago
For years Grace Bodine lived at 30 East Goguac street, with her parents who died some 30 years ago. They are buried in the old part of Oak Hill cemetery near the E. C. Nichols mausoleum. The lot was acquired by John Howard Bodine in 1855, when it cost him $6 for seven burial places. He and his wife are buried there with the senior Frank Bodines and a child of the latter's family. Miss Grace Bodine has the original papers.
Miss Bodine's one hobby is sewing. Maybe that is why she has liked her work ever since she helped her tailor-father make men's clothes. Her knowledge of tailoring has become valuable in her chosen profession of cleaning and repairing clothing. As for dyeing clothes, she says nobody is doing it locally any more. In the old days clothing would be ripped to pieces, salvaged, dyed and restored to usefulness. Nowadays, used clothing is given away or even thrown away. Possibly one reason is that materials aren't as good as they used to be.
Miss Bodine is satisfied with life as she finds it in Battle Creek. She has made only two notable trips in her life. She attended the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 and she went to New York City for two months, some 35 years ago. She feels no yearning for the "bright lights", yet admits that she enjoys them, but traveling is such a bother.
So Grace Bodine will be happy Monday to return to business. She will have her old friend, Mrs. Carrie Harvey, with her, as she has had for years, and enough of a crew to handle the trade.
Miss Bodine pronounces her name "Bod-eye-n", because everybody else does. Correctly speaking, however, it is "Bo-deen", that being the original French pronunciation. Some old-timers still use that pronunciation, so Grace answers to whatever folks call her. And she answers a lot of people, for she has lived here all her life and seen families come, stay and go. The Bodines have not been "gadders". Their name has been in the city directory of Battle Creek ever since there was a city directory.
G.B.D.
From Ronny Bodine:
Obituary, Battle Creek (Mich.) Enquirer of 10 Feb 1964.
Miss Grace A. Bodine, 87, a lifelong Battle Creek resident, who operated a dry cleaning business until she was past 80, died yesterday afternoon in a local hospital where she had been in fairly good health just before last Christmas. She was born here, a daughter of Benjamin F. (Frank) and Anna A. (Eastmead) Bodine. Her grandfather, John Howard Bodine, settled here long before the Civil War and built many fine homes on what now is N. E. Capital Avenue. Miss Bodine began working in her father's tailor shop when she was 17 and in 1910, when two of her brothers started Bodine Cleaners, she went with them as a bookkeeper. She remained 20 years and, when the business was dissolved in 1930, started a dry cleaning business on Calhoun Street. Moving her business location several times but remaining on Calhoun Street, she continued the business until 1957. For many years, Miss Bodine resided at 73 Arthur St. For the last 10 years she had lived with a niece, Mrs. Harry (Olive) Brigden, at 171 N. Union St. Her survivors include two brothers, George Bodine of Flint and William Bodine of Ann Arbor. Two other brothers and a sister preceded her in death.
Burials in Oak Hill Cemetery, Battle Creek, Michigan
Grace A. Bodine 1877-1964