This Month in Rochester History

Fifty years ago this month, a party in the Brooklands area of Avon Township made the pages of the local newspaper. Esther and Abel Jablway, fondly known to their customers as "Mom and Pop," invited all of their customers to a party at their neighborhood grocery store at 1744 East Auburn in the Brooklands subdivision. Grateful for the warm reception they had received when they had relocated from Detroit four years earlier, the couple wanted to do something to thank their customers, so they gave away 2,500 hot dogs and almost 3,000 bottles of pop to all of the neighborhood kids and their families and friends. So many people came out to celebrate with the Jablways that the firefighters from the Brooklands fire station across the street helped with the hot dogs and the Oakland County Sheriff's Department was needed to direct traffic in the area.

The Jablway neighborhood store was an institution in Brooklands for a generation.  Abel Jablway died in 1971 and his wife, Esther, died a decade later in 1981.