Histories

Jack Leitch Remembers:

 Until I began practicing dentistry with Murray, I did not fully comprehend what a talented dentist he was. During the 25 years that we had an office together, I watched and learned and attempted to emulate the skills that he possessed. In the years after his retirement (at age 80), I continued to treat his patients and was amazed to see inlays, crowns and bridges the had been done 25, 30 and even 40 years prior and looked as good as the day they were placed. 

     In addition to caring for his patients, he found time to serve the profession he loved as President of the Detroit District Dental Society, as a trustee  of the Michigan Dental Association and later as its President. He was also one of the founders of the Michigan Dental Service Corporation, the forerunner of what is now Delta Dental Plan of Michigan. 

     Murray was the ultimate University of Michigan booster. He had season tickets to the football games for as long as I can remember. Phyllis and I spent many football Saturdays tailgating with Mom and Dad along with both our friends and their friends. He also served his classmates of the Dental Class of 1926 as class president until his death. 

     As a younger man, he enjoyed playing golf, spending many Sundays playing with my mother at Glen Oaks Country Club. He admitted to not having great prowess on the golf course and usually shot in the high 90’s. 

     Photography was perhaps his greatest hobby. He spent a lot of time seeing family holidays through the view finder of a movie camera, a 35 mm camera, and later on, a tiny Minox (I called it his spy camera) which he always carried in his pocket to snap pictures of anyone and everybody at any time. 

    Murray was a real fire buff. As a small boy, I remember spending hours with him at the Detroit Fire Department’s Engine 42 fire station. He became good friends with the officers and men. He carried helmet, coat and boots in the trunk of his car and the firemen would call him if there was a big fire, even sometimes going out in the middle of the night. I loved going with him to the station and sometimes to fires. They would let me slide down the pole and on two occasions let me ride back from the fire on the engine, crouched down between the engineer and the officer so no one would see me.

      He also loved to putter around the house caring for his yard of which he was very proud, but there came a time when he had to turn it over to a lawn service and I think it bothered him that he was unable to care for the place that he and Eva bought in 1943. After Mom died in 1986, his life seemed to go down hill. He lost much of his enthusiasm for life, his vision deteriorated from glaucoma so he was unable to drive and he was very lonely, but he was unwilling to move to a senior residential facility because he couldn’t bear to part with many of his possessions and all the attached memories and because “I don’t want to live with all those old people.”

     He suffered a series of small strokes around Christmas, 1989 and I was forced to put him in a nursing home. Undoubtedly the most difficult decision I had to make since the day I took away his drivers license. But being Murray, he did try to make the best of it. He had always had the attitude if life gives you lemons, make lemonade. He never gave up hope that he would return to his own home, even though I believe he knew that was unrealistic. His short term goal was to live long enough to receive the annual Michigan Outstanding Dentist award with which he was to be honored at the Michigan Dental Association’s meeting in April. He didn’t make it. He suffered a massive stroke on Good Friday, April 13, 1990, seven months short of his 90th birthday. I accepted the award posthumously on his behalf.

     In the four years since Mom died, he had not made the decision as to the disposition of her ashes. I told him about the beautiful Memorial Garden at our church, the First Presbyterian of Farmington, and that one did not have to be a member to have their ashes interred and suggested that it might be a place he would like to consider as a final resting place for Mom. He liked the idea so I said when the weather got better, I would take him to the church to check it out.   

     Later that year, both his and Eva's ashes were placed in the garden, together again after 61 years of marriage.

Dick Noble Remembers:

Murray Leitch was my grandfather - my mother’s father.  My first memories of him were from the early 1950’s. Murray was in his 50’s then since he was born in 1900. He lived at 15777 Ashton Road, Detroit, Michigan in an area called Rosedale Park.  I spent a lot of time at his house during my childhood. It was a beautiful colonial house with big elm trees along the street. The current Google Maps street view shows what happened after all the elm trees died from Dutch Elm disease. 

At the time it was a middle class neighborhood. Murray bought the house in 1943 and he was the second owner. He lived there until just before his death in 1990. Like so many neighborhoods in Detroit it became almost totally Afro American and at his death Afro Americans purchased it. 

When I was about 12 years old Murray helped me buy a power lawnmower and I cut his grass during the summer. I learned a lot from Murray about how to work and keep tools organized-skills that I have used for my entire life. He had a really beautiful yard. The grass had originally been bent grass like the grass on the green of a golf course. 

Many of my early memories involve going over to my grandparents’ house for Thanksgiving and Christmas. These were elaborate meals in their dining room. We would have two Christmases-opening the presents at our house and then another present-opening session at my grandparents. We didn’t have a fireplace and I really enjoyed it when Murray made a fire on Christmas day. 

After my parents got divorced, I remember Murray coming  over to our house and putting up outdoor Christmas lights.  

When I was in the Boy Scouts, Murray helped me make a wooden shoe shine kit. This was project that required a lot of sanding and Murray helped me with it. I won the first prize. I still have the shoe shine kit today.

Murray liked history and he gave me books on US history which had been published by the University of Michigan.

Murray belonged to the Detroit Yacht Club and I remember going there with the rest of the family for dinner. We would swim in the indoor pool.

Sometimes I would visit his dental office. He would let me play around in his dental lab which his Bunsen burner and melt dental wax.  Murray and his son, Jack, did all my dental work growing up. Some of the work was gold and later in Oregon dentists would comment on how good the work was. 

When I was in high school and thinking about careers, I went out to Ann Arbor with Murray and visited the University of Michigan Dental School. As a child I had injured my left eye and I did not have binocular vision and so I had trouble with depth perception. Murray thought that that would make it very difficult if not impossible to be a dentist and I remember talking with one of the professors in the dental school about that and he confirmed that that would be a big problem. 

When I was in college and in law school at the University of Michigan, Murray and Eva would come out and take me out to dinner and sometimes we would attend a football game. 

I moved away from Michigan in 1970 when i got out of law school and after that I saw Murray and Eva about every other year when I went back to Detroit. 

In he 80’s when personal computers were just coming out, Murray was having trouble with his vision. I typed us his address book and printed it in a very large font and mailed it to him so he could see it. 

There is a lot of Murray in me. From him I have a sense of order and a style of working. He was lover of gadgets bar none and I have that love as well. He was deeply into photography and I am deep into video and the computer. He was a professional and I am one as well. We both liked history. 

It has given me a great deal of pleasure to create this page so that others who did not know him personally can learn about him. Were he alive he would be almost 109 years old as I am writing today which is November 17, 2009.