Community Profile
Commerce
Longtimers
Times have changed since those
summers on the lake.
•
R
usty Rosenthal Rosman •
remembers the knock on the
door in 1948 that first sent
her family to Commerce Township. It
was in the midst of the polio epidemic
that swept the nation from 1942 to
1955, and both she and her brother
had just recovered from "the fever."
I'll never forget my mother saying,
`You don't know what frightened is
until you answer the door and the
doctor is standing there, and you had-
n't called him,"" Rosman says. "He
told her to get the kids out of the city.
One of us grabbed the mikhig, the
other grabbed the fleishig and we went
to the lake. When we were kids, we
lived on the beach in our swimsuits."
Rosman and her sister, Joanne
Rosenthal Goldstein, visiting from
Maryland, sat in Rosman's kitchen
area overlooking North Commerce
Lake and recalled how the family rent-
ed a cottage on another part of the
lake, later buying a cottage that still
stands just a few houses from where
Rosman now lives with her husband,
Stephen.
"We were told that kids in the city
got sick and kids in the country didn't,
so everyone who could rented a cot-
tage and got out of the city for the
summer," says Rosman, recalling that
the men came out to the "bungalow
communities" off of Cass Lake, Sylvan
Lake, Walled Lake and Commerce
Lake on the weekends. (Commerce
Lake was later officially designated as
two separate lakes to circumvent pub-
lic access requirements.)
Rosman's parents, Dorothy and Jay
Rosenthal, owned the Detroit Store
Fixture Co. on Linwood Avenue,
which remains in the family but is
now on Eight Mile Road in Detroit.
Joanne remembers that it took about
90 minutes to get to the cottage,
which "seemed like forever. We sang a
zillion songs on the way there," she
says.
In the mid-'50s, with the develop-
ment of the polio vaccine, air condi-
tioning and summer camps through-
out the area, most Jewish families and
others stopped coming to the lakes for
the summer, but the Rosenthals kept
coming to their cottage.
"We were about the only Jews out
here for about 40 years," says Rosman,
recalling how they would fit nine peo-
ple into a boat powered by a five-
horsepower motor to cross the river to
make a minyan. "Late in the day on
Shabbat, we'd pile into the boat with
kippot and siddurim and our mom
would say, 'Here we go, the first
Hebrew congregation of Commerce!'"
Marveling At Changes
Today, she and her husband live on
Island Drive in the Village of
Commerce not far from Huron Valley-
Sinai Hospital. In 1974, they bought
the property as newlyweds. She says
four of the nine properties on the road
are owned by Jewish families.
Bringing up their two children in
Commerce, the Rosmans logged a lot
of miles each week driving to Hillel
Day School in Farmington Hills and
weekly Shabbat services at
Congregation Shan rey Zedek in
Southfield. Though she worked as a
substitute teacher in the Walled Lake
Schools for 20 years, she wanted her
"Just yesterday, I was sitting outside in the evening with
my husband after a day ofgardening-, and I asked him,
Aren't we the luckiest people in the world?'
JN
7/28
2005
60
Aviva Thatch Sandler,
who lives on South Commerce Lake
Rusty Rosman clowns on the dock of North Commerce Lake with her neighbor and
cousin Marlene Laskey Hollenkamp.
kids to get a Jewish education and felt
the public schools weren't right for
them. By the time they were ready for
high school, they went to Walled Lake
Central and Rosman says she was
pleased with the education they
received.
"There was a complete changeover
in the atmosphere," she says.
The sisters marvel at the changes —
from Michigan Route 5 to shopping.
"The thought you could buy a
kosher chicken in Commerce is mind-
boggling," says Goldstein, recalling
how her family used to have to bring
kosher food from the city to the cot-
tage.
But Rosman is already used to it
because Jewish-owned Hiller's, then
called Shopping Center Market,
opened in 1985 at 14 Mile and
Haggerty. Jim Hiller continues to lead
the multiple-store family supermarket
business.
"Costco started with one door of
kosher food in their freezers, and is
now up to six," boasts Rosman,
impressing her sister. "When Hiller's
moved out here, it somehow legit-
imized the area," as did the opening of
the United Artist Theatres.
For former East Coast Jews, big
news is that a Carvel Ice Cream store,
with its kosher product, is scheduled
to open in September.
Rosman is involved in the township,
chairing both its Board of Review and
Zoning Board of Appeals for 21 years.
She says singles are moving into the
new condominiums as well as seniors
who are moving out of Southfield and
Oak Park. M-5 makes it possible to
get to their old neighborhoods, and
they aren't far from the Jewish
Community Center in West
Bloomfield and the synagogues in the
area.
She has seen Chanukah cards and
gifts showing up in local Hallmark
stores. She says that the Farmer Jack at
Union Lake and Commerce roads
(where Carvel is coming) has a large
kosher section.
"They used to send their Passover
excess to the Farmer Jack at Maple and
Orchard Lake in West Bloomfield;
now they call over and ask Maple and
Orchard Lake to send things over," she
says.
At Shaarey Zedek, she says her mail
used to be sorted into the "other" box
for areas with small Jewish communi-
ties. "Now, we have our own box. I
have company in my zip code. And I'm
living exactly where I want to be."
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