ANN ARBOR, MI — Claire Harding’s flower shop blossomed in Ann Arbor for more than three decades.
Harding, the former owner of downtown’s Chelsea Flower Shop, died Nov. 29 from COVID-19 complications. She was 90 years old. She had been admitted to Ascension Providence Park Hospital in Novi on Sunday, Nov. 22.
Son Jeff Harding said his mother’s years of dedication to Chelsea Flower Shop, paired with her kind-hearted attitude, is why she will be missed by so many.
Working at the flower shop was the joy of a lifetime for Harding, whose fun-loving spirit, eye for floral design and commitment to customer service made Harding a role model for employees and community members, he said.
“She was a farm girl that moved out here in the Great Depression. Her whole extended family did after their entire farm estate was wiped out during the Dust Bowl,” Jeff Harding said.
It was during her childhood that Harding developed a knack for an honest day’s work and attention to detail, according to her son.
Harding went to Slauson Junior High before attending Ann Arbor High School and Eastern Michigan University. The woman who owned the Liberty Street flower shop left it to Harding when she died. Harding took over the shop in 1973 and ran it until 2005.
“It was interesting growing up in that flower shop because we got to deliver flowers to every denomination and got to check out all the beautiful churches in Ann Arbor,” Jeff Harding said.
Harding became well connected in Ann Arbor through years of providing floral arrangements at weddings, celebrations and events. Doctors, fellow business owners and members of the community trusted Harding’s shop to make their floral arrangements for holidays, special events and occasions.
Jeff Harding remembers his mother being responsible for as many as 13 weddings in one weekend, he said.
“There’d be weekends when there would be seven (weddings) on Saturday and six on Sunday, so we had to literally start preparing flowers on Wednesday afternoons,” Jeff Harding said. “Sometimes the shop was crowded with 10 people working to get ready for a weekend like that, or holiday weekends. Before the big box stores came along, they used to move Poinsettias through the flower shop to the point that there’d be literally hundreds of plants going out to the churches and venues.”
After selling the shop to Nobuko Sakoda in 2005, Harding kept working there until 2012 when her health declined and she was hospitalized, eventually retiring to Oakmont Northville Senior Community.
Sakoda, 73, knew Harding for nearly half a century after she was hired her to work at Harding’s shop upon her arrival to Ann Arbor in 1974.
Born in Japan, Sakoda lived in Honolulu and moved to Ann Arbor with her husband who came from Hawaii to earn a masters degree at the University of Michigan. Getting accustomed to American culture was a daunting challenge for Sakoda, who said she is forever grateful for the help Harding provided.
“When she hired me, the only thing I could say in English was, ‘I am looking for a job, I want a job,” Sakoda said. “I went to ask for a job and she hired me right there. She was an amazingly open-minded person.”
When Sakoda started working at the flower shop, she was nervous that she wouldn’t be able to keep up because the language barrier prevented her from answering phones or interacting with customers. It wasn’t long until Harding discovered Sakoda’s talent for floral design.
“I was trained in the flower arrangement style called Ikebana, a traditional Japanese art form, and she discovered that I could do something without much instructions, so she started giving me the flower arrangement orders while I had no idea what was happening in the shop because I couldn’t speak the language,” Sakoda said.
Harding went above and beyond to make Sakoda and her dozens of employees feel like family, buying lunch every workday for everyone, even part-time workers. Sakoda was surprised to learn Harding’s warm and caring reaction when she or another coworker arrived to work late — a response very different from the one she might have received from an employer in Japan, she said.
“Making a mistake was nothing to her,” Sakoda said. “She’d say, ‘If you can learn something from it, it’s no problem.’ If an employee came to work late, she’d never ask that person why you were late, she’d always say ‘Oh, you got here, are you OK? Was there any problem?’ Which I could not believe because that is completely different from what would happen in Japan.”
“Coming to the Midwest in the 1970s, I was worried about how there weren’t many Asians here and how I would be accepted here, but Claire and her friends, they were always ready to help,” Sakoda said.
Harding was determined to be a light in the lives of others, Sakoda said, adding that there are countless examples of her selflessness, but there is one that Sakoda said she will never forget.
“We had lots of snow in the winter and at the time, my husband had to go to Japan for his work so I was just at the home by myself, and one morning, I was hearing this scrapping sound outside,” Sakoda said. “I look outside my window and it was Claire and her husband, Brad, shoveling snow from my driveway. I just couldn’t believe my boss was doing this for me so I go out and she explained to me, why.”
Harding and her husband came to Sakoda’s house to shovel her driveway out of concern that leaving her driveway and walkways unshoveled could attract burglars, Sakoda said.
“I won’t ever forget that,” Sakoda said. “Her kindness, her heart is what I will remember most — I wish I could have her kind heart.”
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The Link LonkDecember 08, 2020 at 04:23AM
https://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/2020/12/longtime-ann-arbor-flower-shop-owner-who-died-of-covid-19-remembered-for-kind-heart.html
Longtime Ann Arbor flower shop owner who died of COVID-19 remembered for ‘kind heart’ - MLive.com
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