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- Provided by Robert L. Winder:
From the Detroit Free Press of 29 August 1943:
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Woman of the Week
In the Printing Business, She's a Special Type
LAST APRIL Mrs. Arthur Carkeek was 82 years old. But she can still handle a composition stick and set a line of type with the best of them. In fact, she and her son do all the type-setting for the job printing business Mrs. Carkeek started 52 years ago in a bedroom of her home on Harper.
When the business grew out of the house and the youngest of her four children was a child in arms, she carried the baby right along with her every day to the shop. Today Mrs. Carkeek has six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, and the shop is in a building on the Detroit river, where Mrs. Carkeek also has a fascinating apartment full of heirloom furniture and flowering plants. From her bed she has a clear view of the Ambassador Bridge. Outside the windows is a roof terrace where she likes to sit until midnight every evening, watching the water and the boats. All the excursion boat captains are her special friends.
ALTHOUGH she was born in Cleveland, the former Jennie Winder grew up in Toronto and went to a private school kept by the widow of a British officer. Mrs. Carkeek's father was a brilliant man: scholar, inventor and minister of the Disciples of Christ church in Toronto. One of his inventions was a little wooden press on which his sermons were printed, and for this his young daughter learned to set type when she was 12 years old. Married at 17 to an artist, Mrs. Carkeek and her husband came through Detroit on their wedding trip. They attended a service at the old St. Joseph's Episcopal Church, then at Woodward and Medbury, sitting in a rear pew. In Mrs. Carkeek's apartment today is one of those same old stately, carved walnut pews, acquired when the church was remodeled. "I prize this above everything, ": she said.
AFTER Mrs. Carkeek inherited the house on Harper, the Carkeeks moved to Detroit. When Glynn Court, west of Twelfth, was still wooded land, she built a house there after her husband's death, giving up the house 12 years ago for the riverfront. While the children were growing up, the family had a camp on Lake Ste. Claire, the "Karkeek Kettle Kamp," where Mrs. Carkeek became adept at kettle cookery. Her love of outdoors and her "green thumb" are apparent in the flourishing plants which line the terrace in summer, the windows in winter, many of them plants she's kept alive for years. She had a fireplace built into her apartment, too, because she still loves an open fire.
IN HER SPARE time Mrs. Carkeek knits afghan squares for the Red Cross, has done two afghans of 108 squares each and is working on a third. Last Christmas time, during the holiday rush, she worked with her son all night, setting rush jobs. She protests sturdily that it didn't hurt her a bit. To prove her point, she related with a chuckle that last New Year's Eve, instead of going to bed as her children thought she had, she got on the street car and went to church for the Watch Night service, all by herself. She goes out to movies, too, but only occasionally, because Greta Garbo is the only actress she'll go to see on the screen.
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1861 - 1952 (91 years)
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