OAK HARBOR, Ohio — Doris Wendt, who supplied floral arrangements for weddings, funerals, and other occasions and bedding plants for home gardeners as co-owner of an Ottawa County nursery, died Monday at Ottawa County Riverview nursing home near Oak Harbor. She was 97.
She had dementia and was in declining health recently, her son Roger Wendt said.
Before moving to the nursing home five years ago, Mrs. Wendt lived at the family homestead in Carroll Township. That’s where she and her husband, Alfred, in the early 1950s opened their business, combining their first names’ first two letters to create Aldo Nursery.
The nursery came to include a greenhouse, where they grew bedding plants — vegetables and annuals and perennials. Mrs. Wendt was at home full time, while her husband worked full time in electrical maintenance at the Silver Fleece Co. in Port Clinton, which canned sauerkraut, cherries, tomatoes, and pumpkin.
She dealt with customers who stopped by or called and she put together funeral arrangements and church vases, wedding flowers, and corsages for many occasions. The nursery supplied floral grave blankets and pillows.
“She had a good eye for design,” daughter Janet Burg said.
The couple’s seven children had chores related to the business.
“That was our requirement, our chores,” Mrs. Burg said.
The younger Mr. Wendt recalled delivering heavy concrete planters to cemeteries in spring and retrieving them in the fall.
“I did a lot of deliveries to funeral homes and churches,” he said. “We never took too many vacations, because this was a full-time, everyday job.”
She and the business were widely known, and relied upon, in the community.
“She was just real personable, a kind person,” Mrs. Burg said. “She was a gentle, caring person who always had a smile on her face. She’d raise her voice, but she didn’t get mad very well.”
The business was an outgrowth of a prescription her husband received after his return from World War II. A B-17 tailgunner, he was shot down behind German lines, but wasn’t captured and for six months was considered missing. He kept walking and found his way to the French resistance. His doctor back home told him to start a hobby, for the sake of his nerves.
He took up growing African violets in the basement, and what became Aldo Nursery “progressed from there,” the younger Mr. Wendt said.
Mrs. Wendt had been a member of the Town and Country Garden Club of Oak Harbor. She liked to bowl and, while working in the greenhouse, enjoyed listening to polka music.
“Family was her big thing,” the younger Mr. Wendt said.
Doris Irene Schubel and her twin, Iris, were born June 6, 1925 to Matilda and William Schubel and grew up in East Toledo.
She was a graduate of Waite High School and had a secretarial job afterward at the former Gulf Oil refinery.
She and Alfred Wendt married in 1946. He died in 1992. She was preceded in death by son David Wendt and daughter Phyllis Henry.
Surviving are her sons, Jim, Dale, and Roger Wendt; daughters, Kathleen Fawley and Janet Burg; 13 grandchildren; 16 great-grandchildren, and two great-great grandchildren.
Visitation will be from 2-8 p.m. Sunday at Robinson-Walker Funeral Home, Oak Harbor. Funeral services will begin at 11 a.m. Monday at St. John Evangelical Lutheran Church, Oak Harbor, where she was a member.
The family suggests tributes to St. John Evangelical Lutheran Church, Oak Harbor, or ProMedica Hospice of Fremont.
First Published March 18, 2023, 4:00 a.m.