Contact: Dolores (Mohr) Kenyon
E-mail: dolores@wiclarkcountyhistory.org
Surnames: Kobs, Landwehr, Sietz
----Source: Tribune Record Gleaner (Loyal, Clark Co., WI) 5/30/1974
Kobs, Mrs. Edna (Blossom Shop - 1974)
Mingling with Mary (By Mary Woods)
“You have to learn never to plan ahead and take the joys and burdens as thy come for we never know what tomorrow may bring.” That statement was made by Mrs. Edna Kobs, owner and operator of Kobs Blossom Shop in Spencer, and after taking a closer look at her life one may see that the statement is very true.
Born and raised in the Marshfield area, Mrs. Kobs moved with her parents to a farm west of Marshfield in the Town of Spencer. She attended the Shady Lane Rural School and Purdy High School in Marshfield. In 1933, she married Dan Kobs, now deceased, in Trinity Lutheran Church in Spencer. After their marriage, they farmed east of Spencer.
After 24 years of farming, the Kobs family moved to the village where Mr. Kobs worked in the construction business. They purchased a 40-acre farm on the south side of town and built five homes, now known as the Kobs sub-division.
“When we moved to town,” states Mrs. Kobs, “I had about seven different jobs that kept me busy, I worked as a census taker for the Spencer School System, took care of my invalid father-in-law for eight years, was a news correspondent for the Spencer Record, WDLB radio station, and the Marshfield News Herald. Doing a lot of different jobs gave me the opportunity to get to know many of the Spencer people of which I truly enjoy.”
Always having an interest in flowers, Mrs. Kobs organized the Spencer Garden Club in 1959, and is still a charter member of the club. She states that the club was helped a great deal by the Garden Club of Unity.
In 1960, tragedy struck the Kobs family when Mr. Kobs passed away. The family was left with the construction business until the children decided that the work was too much for Mrs. Kobs and told her to take life a little slower and do something that she always wanted to do and would enjoy doing – working with flowers.
In 1963, Mrs. Kobs leased a shop in Marshfield until a serious car accident in 1965, caused her to close the shop.
In May 1963, she began her floral business in the same location as it stands today. According to Mrs. Kobs, “I planned the blueprints for the house and have built on to it three times since I started. I attended the American Floral Art School in Chicago for six weeks prior to opening the shop and since then everything has fallen into the right place. I am assisted in the shop by my son Jerry who attended Brainard Vocational School for Floral Instruction and began working in the shop in 1969.”
In 1968, the Kobs also took on the Bolen Line of garden, lawn, and snow equipment.
Turning to the topic of flowers, Mrs. Kobs states that when she began the shop she just dealt in flowers, but gradually got into the crafts, of which she is involved with today. She teaches three craft classes a week during the fall and spring, with each session running for eight weeks.
“Being in the floral business is very unpredictable,” states Mrs. Kobs, “for you can only do so much of the work ahead of time. You can plan occasions like weddings ahead of time, but they are just one of the few occasions that you do plan. Everything else seems to come up with no notification and sometimes this is a problem. Many people are going out of the fresh flower business due to the fact that getting flowers is hard at times and keeping them for more than a few days is difficult. At the beginning of our floral business we had all the flowers shipped from Madison, Chicago, or Minneapolis, and we had some pretty drastic experiences. One time, we had to make artificial flowers because the flowers that were to come didn’t arrive because of fog at the Marshfield airport, and the plane had to fly to Green Bay to land. We also had many times when the flowers were shipped to Spencer, Iowa which caused many problems also. Today a truck delivers fresh flowers to our shop five days a week.”
“Speaking on another experience that caused some problems in the business was the time that I got a rose thorn in my finger and it had some insecticide sprayed on it and it took the doctors six weeks to discover what was causing the infection in my hand,” reflects Mrs. Kobs.
Besides operating the shop, Mrs. Kobs teaches a craft class at the vocation school at the Granton High School. She is a member of Trinity Lutheran Church in Spencer, the Ladies Aid, Wisconsin – Upper Michigan Floral Association, Hobby Industry Association of America, and has received three diplomas from various craft seminars. She has four children, Mrs. Roger (Margie) Landwehr of Wausau, Mrs. Allen (Marian) Sietz, Jerry, and Merlin, all of Spencer.
Mrs. Kobs’ life hasn’t been all happy and filled with glorious moments, from the beginning of her life she has had her share, and perhaps more, of tragedy. From the burns, she received as a child from hot coffee, to the death of her husband, to the car accident that kept her hospitalized for six months, Mrs. Kobs is truly a person who has accepted the way things are, and in her beginning statement her philosophy on life stand out – live for today for we know not what tomorrow may bring. But from all the tragedy she has found an occupation that not only takes a lot of time, but for all the hours that she works with the flowers or in the craft classes, the rewards are plentiful.
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