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As the City of Rhinelander celebrates its centennial year, Ruth Hempel of Forth Floral finds herself reflecting on the long history of her family’s business. Her great-grandfather, Peter Philipp, started the shop she now runs in the fall of 1900.

“I had to make a bouquet for the celebration last weekend and as I was trying to make something old-fashioned, I wondered if grandpa had to do something for the opening of the courthouse,” Hempel said.

Of the three businesses that have operated continually since the city was founded–– the paper mill, Lindey’s Cleaners, and Forth Floral–– the flower shop’s story is most unique in that the business has been passed between generations through a matrilineal line.

Forth Floral has been in the same family ever since Peter and Lena Philipp moved from Luxembourg and started it, but when Arthur Forth married Julia Philipp in 1928, the named changed. Marv and Leona Schumacher, Hempel’s parents, took over the business in 1958 from Leona’s parents and ran it until 1989. Since then Ruth has run the business with her husband Henning.

The Philipps originally came to Rhinelander by way of Ellis Island. Peter Philipp had been in the horticulture business in his native Luxembourg. He spent two years on truck farms in Valparaiso, Ind. and Evanston, Ill. before relocating his family to the Northwoods.

When the Philipps arrived in 1900, there was little or no market for flowers, so they cultivated vegetables. But in a few years, with the growth of the city, the Philipps supplied the flowers for Rhinelander’s elite citizens.

The family lore of the business reaches back to the city’s earliest days. Schumacher remembers her mother telling her how she would spend the weekend selling radishes in the taverns of Hungry Hollow to the lumberjacks.

In December of 1910, a fire nearly destroyed the business, killing the delivery horse and damaging the greenhouse and stable. Until the Hempels decided to renovate their garage building, the burnt timbers from the fire preserved the memory.

Schumacher, one of a pair of twin girls, was born in the heart of the Great Depression.

“We were born in the depths of the Depression,” she said. “It started on both coasts and back then it took a couple of years for the effects to reach the fly-over part of the country. By 1933, my parents couldn’t even give flowers away, but somehow they managed to survive.”

Over the many years that Forth Floral has operated, the flower business has also changed.

“Things have changed a lot over the years,” said Hempel. “It used to be we grew everything ourselves. Now we get flowers from all over the world.”

Schumacher remembers one of the constant struggles of the business as trying to heat the greenhouses through the long Wisconsin winters. The shop originally heated with slab wood cast off by the mills on Boom Lake. They shifted to coal before the Depression and heavy oil after World War II before turning to natural gas in 1973 during the oil embargo.

“It’s kind of a symbiotic relationship,” said Hempel. “The town grows and we grow with it.”

Forth Floral still operates a greenhouses alongside its cut flower business, a practice that has become less and less common over the years.

“The concept of having a greenhouse and a flower shop was not unusual,” said Schumacher. “They grew their own stock because the transportation wasn’t there to ship it in.”

Early pictures of the Philipp flower shop show the cultivation of carnations in the greenhouses directly in the soil. Now the Hempels cultivate plants in their greenhouse on metal benches. One of Schumacher’s earliest memories is playing under the greenhouse benches, and Hempel said her children grew up doing it too.

But being a child around a flower shop isn’t all fun and games.

“When you’re in a business like this, you learn a work ethic,” said Schumacher. “You’re hands are so important and they do get put to use.”

Running a family business for over a hundred years has its challenges, but Hempel wouldn’t have it any other way.

“You take your work home a lot with you,” said Hempel. “At family functions, the talk can turn to business sometimes when you don’t really want it to. But there’s also a built-in support system.”

On Friday, Schumacher and Hempel, worked side by side as mother and daughter to prepare the flowers for three weddings. Hempel said there is a certain level of pride that comes from the business’s long history.

“There is a sense of pride and almost responsibility to keep the reputation of the business going,” she said. “It’s one piece of Rhinelander that hasn’t changed.”

Hempel also credited the many people who have worked in the shop alongside the family over the years.

“This family never could have done this without the staff we’ve had,” she said. “We’ve had such a good relationship with all of the people who have worked with us.”

Over the years, Forth Floral has catered to the city’s fanciest occasions and tables, but Schumacher remembers how, as immigrants, her grandparents were looked down upon.

“I remember when my mother would say that one of the Mrs. Browns would call during dinner and she would have to leave her table and go over to the shop to get something for their table,” said Schumacher. “In those days all of the families with the big houses had servants.”

But times change, and families go from new-comers to pillars in the community. That’s part of Rhinelander’s story too.

Hempel met her husband Henning working at a greenhouse in Minneapolis. Henning had grown up in Aachen, Germany–– in the Rhineland–– before emigrating to the U.S. It was his idea, according to Hempel–– to come back to Rhinelander and buy the business form her parents.

Hempel said she loves the variety of her work.

“There aren’t a lot of people who think of it as a career,” said Hempel. “It’s very labor intensive and some people might not want to put up with that, but it’s a nice life.”

Schumacher called the business a “farm under glass” and cited the unique challenge of operating as a producer, a middle man, and a retailer all at the same time.

Whatever challenges the world has thrown at the women of Forth Floral, they have always managed to come out on top. Today the business is thriving, having been improved by each generation of owners and having grown into the fabric of Rhinelander society.

Flowers are often bought to mark an occasion to celebrate life’s most joyful moments or recognize its most tragic ones. And sometimes they are purchase on a fleeting whim. And in Rhinelander, regardless of the reason, they have been purchased at Forth Floral for over a hundred years.

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Rae Petersen wrote on Sep 29, 2008 2:44 PM:

" When my mom lay near death April in '96, I so wished I could bring her arbutus, her favoite spring scent. Since that wasn't possible, I went to Forth's Floral asking them for something fragrant. They produced the most beautiful hyacith. Mom smiled as she inhaled it's rich soothing aroma on her last afternoon and I thank God for the kind, gentle help of the florists. It eased a very difficult time. "

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