A room with a View

One construction project is more than meets the eye

By Paul Snyder

A view of a Findorff crane through a Meriter Hospital window in Madison Photo by Paul Snyder

A hospital room can be a lonely place.

And for a woman who loved to talk and visit like Lucille Kanitz did, it might as well have been a prison cell. Confined to an isolated room with a door that was constantly closed, she was allowed no fresh flowers and no fresh fruit, and whenever she ventured outside her room, she had to wear a mask. A television was there to help pass the time, but she didn’t care for TV.

So Lucille, who was diagnosed with AML leukemia in February, decided to make the most of what little the room offered. She found conversation with the doctors and nurses checking on her, and her family visited all the time. Plus there was that window, offering a whole world of things to think about.

She once wrote a story called “Savor the Small Things.” Now it was time to practice what she preached.

But the yellow tower crane outside Lucille’s room window wasn’t a small thing. It was a very, very big thing that she couldn’t help but notice.

Lucille Kanitz's connection to J.H. Findorff & Son Inc. goes beyond the fan letter she sent to a Findorff crane operator. Her father, W. Lee Fletcher, pictured here in 1934, was a Findorff welder in the 1940s and 1950s. Photo courtesy of Lynn Brower

J.H. Findorff & Son Inc., Madison, arrived at Meriter Hospital in Madison in summer 2004 to build a six-story expansion of the facility’s five-story atrium and add another story to the hospital’s 10-story tower. The yellow tower crane on the east side of the hospital to facilitate the expansion was a prominent though temporary part of the city’s skyline.

It was also an eyeful for patients in the hospital’s east wing. However bothersome it was for some patients — it obstructed views of the Capitol and Lake Monona — it was an object of increasing fascination for Lucille, who caught a glimpse of the crane’s operator, Brenda Hacker, climbing to work one morning.

“When she was first in the hospital, she was so sick after chemo that she couldn’t actually leave the bed, so she would see the crane operator through the span of her window,” said Arthur Kanitz, Lucille’s son. “Once she got a little healthier, she would sit by the window and watch her work all day.”

And with every passing day, Lucille wondered about the work a little more. Lynn Brower and Denise Ralston, Lucille’s daughters, said they remember how enthusiastic she was over the day-to-day operations outsider her window.

Lucille Kanitz visits Meriter Hospital in March, one month after being diagnosed with AML leukemia. Photo courtesy of lynn brower

“It was important because it was almost her whole world,” said Brower. “That was what she saw and that was what she watched.

“She’d see them bring the packages and equipment up and then the big containers of garbage they’d bring down. They’d bring something up, and you’d see nothing but hands reaching over the edge. It was always just enough to tantalize your imagination.”

But, Lucille’s children said, it was that enigmatic operator that Lucille wondered about most. Lucille couldn’t be certain, but the thought that it might be a woman fascinated her. What did she do up there all day? What was in the backpack she carried up with her? How long did it take to climb all that way?

“It took [Lucille] awhile before she actually saw her start at the bottom and get all the way to the top,” said Ralston. “But once she was able to watch that, she timed it.”

Five minutes, with no break.

A Kanitz family photo from 1958 shows (clockwise from lower left) Lucille Kanitz, her husband, Chet Kanitz; her brother-in-law, Dick Schmidt; her sister-in-law, MaryAnn Schmidt; and her father-in-law, Art Kanitz. Photo courtesy of Denise Ralston

And Lucille made sure everyone who came into her room knew about the crane.

David Brandner was one of the nurses who often checked on Lucille, and he spent a lot of time looking out the window and talking with her.

“She ended up in that room by chance,” he said. “But that crane became such a big part of her life that every time she came in, we would plan on that being her room. She watched the workers and was just fascinated by the precision of their work.”

Ralston said others’ interest in the crane would only excite her mother further.

“My mother really enjoyed other people’s reactions to it,” she said. “My husband came up and visited, and they would talk about it. She got a big kick that he enjoyed it so much.”

Lucille’s condition improved enough after some weeks that she was released from the hospital. But, Brower said, continuing chemotherapy treatments often would land Lucille back in the hospital. As time passed and her health deteriorated, there was a growing sense of the end approaching.

So Lucille wrote letters to family and friends, sharing stories and thoughts they could hold on to. Her children said she was an avid writer throughout her life, so it seemed a natural thing to do. There was one letter, however, that would be a new experience for her.

She had never written a fan letter but thought the yellow crane operator was due one, her children said. She asked Brower to help her find the mysterious person, but there was one condition.

“Mother said, ‘If it’s not a woman, I don’t wanna know about it,’” Brower said.

The first pleasing surprise for Lucille was that Findorff was the company handling the construction. Her father, W. Lee Fletcher, was a Findorff employee in the 1940s and 1950s.

“When my grandfather came back to Wisconsin after the war, he got a job with Findorff,” said Arthur Kanitz. “He helped hang the cross on the Lutheran church on East Washington. He could weld in any angle you could throw at him.”

Lucille made the family history connection right away, and Brower decided it might be nice if her mother’s contact with Findorff went beyond just a letter.

“She wrote two letters — one to Findorff with an explanation and one to the yellow crane operator,” she said. “So I looked up the address and got it all ready to send, and I thought, ‘As much as this has meant to her, it’d be neat if she could meet these people.’

“So I put my letter in and a contact number. I didn’t think of meeting anyone, really. I mean Findorff — they’re pretty big-shot people, aren’t they?”

The letters were enough to bring personnel in Findorff’s offices to tears, said Amy Recob, Findorff’s marketing manager. She worked to set up a meeting right away and called Brower to inquire when might be a good day to stop by.

Brower, who had just finalized Lucille’s will with the family attorney, said she knew time was of the essence.

“I was right in front of my mother and I didn’t want to say, ‘You’ve gotta come now,’” she said. “So I just told her it had to be very soon, and she got the idea without me spelling it out.”

Recob and Hacker went to Meriter that afternoon, bearing gifts that included shirts, candy and a dozen yellow and pink roses.

“It was very last minute,” said Recob. “We knew this could be an emotional visit, and we really had no idea what we were in for. But she was delighted to see us.

She was very animated and coherent.

“She told us all about her family and her father working with Findorff. And she wanted to know all about Brenda’s job, of course. Brenda was very touched.”
Lucille talked with Recob and Hacker for about 15 minutes, sharing stories and expressing how much the visit meant to her and her family.

“We talk about the Findorff family all the time here,” Recob said. “Even if Lucille’s father hadn’t worked for us, we still would have been so touched by the familial and humanitarian element of this.”

Cindy Ninnemann, another nurse who looked after Lucille during her time in the hospital, said Lucille was so excited by the visit that despite barely being able to speak, she still had to talk about it.

“She was so proud; she had to show me all the gifts,” Ninnemann said. “She was so happy to find out it really was a woman.”

Of course, Lucille already felt pretty familiar with Hacker.

“Mother said, ‘She looked just like I thought she would,’” said Brower.

Lucille Kanitz, 69, died on Oct. 2, less than a week after the visit. But, Ninnemann said, the crane story continued as those at Lucille’s funeral told of what she saw through her window.

“The crane was very important to her,” she said. “She was acknowledging something that other people might have overlooked, and it meant everything to her. She was looking at the world with wonderment to the very end.”

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