Mom's lessons and 'real' Cass Tech love guides a made-in-Detroit florist at Mother's Day

Whenever Claude Thompson allows himself an opportunity to daydream, the 1992 Cass Tech graduate says he sees himself owning a flower shop in downtown Detroit about a mile or so away from where he attended high school, during the years when Cass occupied a landmark, factory-looking edifice, along the Fisher Freeway and Grand River.

Thompson describes his dream place of business as an “easily accessible location” within a multipurpose structure, with enough space for a modest music studio, but cozy enough for friends and new customers to feel at home — including during the evening hours when Thompson enjoys demonstrating his love for flowers, music and Detroiters all at once.

However, as a seasoned florist with more than 30 years in the industry, Thompson, who does business as CAM-Florist, knows that he will not have much time for daydreaming this Mother’s Day weekend. Thompson and a small team of people that will be helping him have places to go and people to see, including roughly 500 expected customers that he desperately wants to please.

“For me, Mother’s Day is all weekend — it’s Friday, Saturday and Sunday,” explained Thompson, who found a few minutes to speak during the afternoon of May 7 after playing the organ two hours earlier for a funeral service conducted at New Hope Tabernacle Church. “Plus, Mother’s Day in Mexico is (Friday) May 10, and we have many customers in southwest Detroit that honor and celebrate their mothers on that date. Wherever you are, this whole weekend is for the mothers, and the mother-in-laws, and for your daughter who just had a baby. With each customer, I’m thinking of someone who loves or misses their mom.”

From Thompson’s primary brick and mortar business location in Eastpointe, 18806 E. 9 Mile Road, and online, Thompson will spend Mother’s Day weekend taking orders, creating custom floral arrangements, and seeing that his flowers are delivered to customers spanning more than 40 cities and 114 ZIP codes throughout southeastern Michigan.

And with every move, Thompson says his enduring connection to his late mother Malissa Lee Thompson-Lucas will provide him with a silent but potent quality-control mechanism that will push him to do his very best work.

“My mom would always call me during Mother’s Day weekend about something — it was often about something very small — and she would say: ‘I know you’re busy, but,’ " recalls Thompson, whose connection to his mother also includes succeeding her as the church organist at New Hope Tabernacle. “I wonder if I could have been a better son? I think I stay busy now to make it seem like all of the time I spent away from my mom around Mother’s Day wasn’t for nothing. I still don’t know how to please Mom, so I guess the best way that I can try to please her is to keep doing a good job.”

Thompson also speaks with reverence about the man who introduced him to a new way of life decades ago that forever changed how Thompson viewed Mother’s Day and other occasions where flowers play a prominent role. The gentleman who Thompson speaks so highly of is Patrick Fitzgerald, who today operates the family-owned Chris Engel’s Greenhouse in Detroit, 1238 Woodmere St., which was established in 1883. However, in 1993, Fitzgerald gave Thompson a job at a flower shop called Excel Designs in the Fisher Building. And, as Thompson tells it, the hire had everything to do with a famous high school that Fitzgerald and Thompson shared in common.

“That Cass Tech love is real,” said Thompson, who confided that before appearing in front of Fitzgerald as a 19-year-old one year removed from his high school graduation, he mistakenly showed up at another location seeking work. “It was May, but it was after Mother’s Day, and I know that he (Fitzgerald, a 1980 graduate of Cass Tech) really didn’t need me. But then he found out I went to Cass and he gave me a job. And we still do things together today.”

The door that Fitzgerald opened for Thompson has literally taken Thompson to many places in and around Detroit, including Southfield’s Northland Center, where he operated a popular flower shop inside Macy’s, which closed on March 22, 2015.

“Macy’s called me in 2013; I didn’t call them — they found me,” recalls Thompson, who says he was discovered by Macy’s largely due to a decision he made very early in his career as a florist to embrace technology, which subsequently increased the visibility of his business and offerings. “It’s ‘click and mortar,’ I do it now and I was doing it 20 years ago. I can give my customers a real preview of what their order will look like when they receive it. It’s like when I used to go to McDonald’s as a kid with my mom and I would tell them to make my sandwich look like the sandwich in the restaurant’s picture. I think about that experience when I’m serving my customers and I get a feeling of satisfaction from each arrangement.”

On the afternoon of May 7, Thompson followed up his McDonald’s story, which occurred around the time Thompson was 6 or 7 years old at a McDonald’s that used to stand at 8 Mile Road and Greenlawn, with another story that took place at a former Big Boy restaurant that was located at 20225 W. Eight Mile Road (now JJ Fish & Chicken) where Thompson’s mom wanted her strawberry Belgian waffles to have the same amount of strawberries as seen in a picture posted by Big Boy during the restaurant’s Strawberry Fest. The stories help to explain why meeting customers’ expectations on a visual level is important to Thompson, but the vivid scenes he passionately described from his childhood also speak to his desire to have a physical work address in Detroit once again.

“Detroit is where I’m from,” said Thompson, who, before his Macy’s experience, set up shop from a Detroit loft near Chene Park, where he says he got the idea for a Detroit-based shop that also serves up music while operating late into the evening. “Doing business in Detroit is also about the people. Customer service and making real connections with people in the community are really the most important things in this business, and these are all things I learned from my mother.”

Thompson, who grew up on Linwood and Richton watching his grandmother Berniece Lee — affectionately known as “Nana” — grow one of his favorite flowers, morning glories, said he also takes pride in his connection to a “community” of Detroit florists.

“In Detroit, we’re a small community of florists, but people trust us to provide the background for some of the most important events in their lives. And as florists in the city, we often work together to make those events successful,” said Thompson, who earlier described a harrowing experience when he was attempting to provide flowers for a mayoral inauguration with workspace provided by Chris Engel’s Greenhouse, while fighting freezing temperatures. “You really become a florist when you realize that no news is good news. If we do everything right, it’s nothing. But if we do something wrong, it’s the end of the world. You have to be thick-skinned in this game. And there has to be something more to your work than just money.

“It’s about the trust that people have in us. Even during the early stages of the pandemic, when people weren’t physically attending funerals, people were calling us about flowers because the services were being broadcasted. So, we always have to try our best to do the right thing for the people we serve.”

Thompson, who also is the proud husband of Shafyla Thompson, will try to do his best by his customers throughout Mother’s Day weekend with help from two small, but spirited teams that will be stationed on the east and west side of metro Detroit. Members of New Hope Tabernacle Church will be represented in those groups, along with Thompson’s adult children, Chelsie and Chauncey Thompson, who also are partners in the family business.

And for any of Claude Thompson’s customers that plan on waiting until Sunday to purchase Mother’s Day flowers, the 6-foot-4 florist says it will only require one look up at his wardrobe to see that the spirit of a very special person in Thompson’s life will be a part of every sale he makes.

“On Sunday, I’m going to try to stay focused by turning off my Wi-Fi and other systems and I will be wearing the traditional boutonniere with my suit to honor my mother,” Claude Thompson said. “I want everyone who sees me on Sunday to know that I had a good mom and that’s how I feel every day.”

Scott Talley is a native Detroiter, a proud product of Detroit Public Schools and a lifelong lover of Detroit culture in its diverse forms. In his second tour with the Free Press, which he grew up reading as a child, he is excited and humbled to cover the city’s neighborhoods and the many interesting people who define its various communities. Contact him at stalley@freepress.com or follow him on Twitter @STalleyfreep. Read more of Scott's stories at www.freep.com/mosaic/detroit-is/. Please help us grow great community-focused journalism by becoming a subscriber.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Mom's lessons and 'real' Cass Tech love guide a Detroit-area florist