Friends for life: A Petaluma hospital that saves old toys

Pamela Townsend clutched the little doll with tight curls and a white gown and whispered, "This is my Christmas present to me."

But there was no need to keep it hush. The handful of women standing around her in the tiny little shop in west Petaluma understood how she felt. That doll was more to her than a few pieces of factory-molded vinyl strung together with stretchy cord. It was her childhood friend, with whom she had shared many happy times and imaginary adventures.

Nearly 70 years have passed since the doll arrived for Christmas. But Townsend, even now at 77, could never part with her Terri Lee.

"It's so funny because I always keep her with all my Christmas stuff," she said. "I only bring her out at Christmas."

Devotion to Terri Lee brought Townsend on a wet and wintry afternoon to The Doll Mercantile. Here in what resembles an old-fashioned Geppetto's workshop, devoid of electronics and filled instead with small hand tools, scissors, fabric, old buttons, wigs, spare parts and racks of tiny clothes, lifetime friends Colleen Richardson and Neva Fleckenstein restore injured, dirty and broken toys — the kind with faces.

The women met in 1944, when they were little girls attending the same church in Southern California. They’ve been fast friends ever since, seeing one another through the ups and downs of life, through high school, college at San Jose State and raising children as working mothers.

"We have each other's backs. We’ve been together through good and bad," said Fleckenstein, the elder at 87, who described their bond as one forged by shared history.

"Any time there was something that came up in our lives, we could always talk to each other," Richardson added.

Both were teachers for 34 years. They supported each other as they lost their longtime spouses during the past decade. Now, in this quiet season of late life, these octogenarians spend their days sewing, mending, pressing tiny clothes, stringing and repainting. If an antique doll made of wood pulp is missing a finger or part of her foot, they will make a new one. They will find new wigs for a bald doll, new eyes for a sightless bear.

Townsend brought in Terri Lee and her smaller sibling, Tiny Terri Lee, for a new hairdo and dress. She dug around in the boxes and bins at the shop, organized by size and era, and selected the perfect dress for her 1950s Terri, which in fact had been made for that same doll as a reproduction years later.

Townsend, who lives in Oakmont, said Terri reminds her of many happy memories playing dolls with her two sisters and other children in the neighborhood.

"She's not going back in the box," Townsend declared, thrilled with how beautiful Terri now looks, cleaned and redressed.

But many of the toys that wind up in The Doll Mercantile hospital have been loved to death, from stuffed animals with no stuffing to dolls missing limbs or eyes. Doll doctors Richardson and Fleckenstein do their best to bring them back to life, so to speak. Theirs is a sort of St. Jude's Hospital for dolls, taking on the worst cases. Almost no patient is turned away.

"I enjoy a challenge," said Richardson, 86, a retired Two Rock Elementary School teacher and principal. She was recruited by the late Helen Putnam, a Petaluma mayor and member of the board of supervisors, who was principal of the rural school when Richardson arrived in 1963 with her husband, David, and two young daughters.

"She never gives up on a challenge," Fleckenstein, who lives in Rohnert Park, said of her friend and partner while wedged in a tight corner behind a sewing machine. "Between the two of us, we usually can figure out some way to do it. Sometimes I will say, ‘Oh we can't do anything with that. And she will say, ‘Let's try this or that or another. And we usually get it back in good condition that makes people happy."

In a disposable culture where repair shops have vanished and broken things are tossed and replaced, Petaluma's doll doctors are part of a dwindling class of tinkerers practicing a self-taught craft.

They have no repair manuals issued by the manufacturer. Instead, they must diagnose and repair based on more than 30 years of experience working on hundreds, if not thousands, of toys and a patience for problem solving. Their "patients" are often at least 50 years old. Some are well over 100.

Many of these elderly toys first arrived wrapped and beribboned as Christmas or Hanukkah presents decades ago. The parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles trolling store aisles during this final crunch week before the holidays may never imagine the factory toys they toss into their carts could become friends for life.

Many of the people who find their way to the mercantile repair shop have held on to their broken toys for years, unable to part with them, even if they are in tatters.

At one time, Petaluma alone had several doll hospitals, Richardson said. Now there are only a smattering left throughout the state and country. Richardson and Fleckenstein admit toys from all over the Bay Area and occasionally from other states, sent by people who find their repair shop online.

During the pandemic, as hospitals filled with COVID-19 patients, Petaluma's doll hospital also filled, leading to a four-month backup for repairs.

"People were at home, looking around their attics, finding all these things and they needed repair," Richardson said. "They said they wanted them for their grandchildren."

They accepted "patients" through a side door during the pandemic shelter-in-place orders. But broken toys arrived by mail as well.

One of the most hopeless cases was a flat piece of fabric that looked like a torn rag. At one time it was a plush fish.

"She just loved it so much as a child and she wanted it fixed up," Richardson said of the woman who brought it to the hospital.

"It was missing two fins," she added. "I had to make two fins for it. One fin that was left I put it back on top. I just kept going."

Then there was the Mickey Mouse whose body had been savaged beyond repair by a dog. Fleckenstein had her doubts about its future, but they were able to build it a new body and spare the original head.

Richardson understands the sentimental attachment people have to their childhood toys, which shared their adventures and secrets and provided comfort when they curled up with them under the covers at night.

She saved her own Plassie baby doll, one of the first plastic dolls made in the 1940s.

"We didn't have much money. But it was amazing to get a doll," she said of the excitement of receiving one at Christmas. Her mother would sew clothes for the dolls or help her dress up their carriages for parades.

"Being an only child, I guess it was like having a friend. Or if it was a baby doll, it was like having a sibling," she said.

Steve Zwillinger drove up from San Francisco with a doll he had given his mother 35 years ago, when she was dying of cancer. He couldn't think of anything to give her at the end of life, but when he saw the Victorian doll at Macy's in New York's Herald Square, with a cherubic face that reminded him of his mother, he knew it was the one thing that could bring her comfort in her final days.

"She squealed with delight and loved it from the moment that doll was in her bed with her. She would fix her dress and hair and make sure everything was perfect," he said.

He kept the doll for more than 30 years, a reminder of his mother. But when he took her off the shelf, he noticed she was dusty and her clothing was worn. He found The Doll Mercantile online. Petaluma's doll doctors cleaned her up, did her hair and found a new dress.

Zwillinger plans to give the doll to his 8-year-old daughter for Christmas, gifting her a piece of the grandmother she never met.

"She will really embrace this age-old doll," he said. "This isn't going to be a Santa gift. It's going to be from me."

John Kelly drove to Petaluma from Vallejo hoping the two miracle workers might do something for his two teddy bears, both his dear friends for 70 years.

He had left one on a counter and it fell to the floor, where his dog found it. Now poor Teddy is missing his face. Kelly, an insurance adjuster, was crushed, as if he had let his old friend down.

He remembered how his mother and his aunt instilled in him lessons about caring for others, through the toys he called "my creatures." He had made some repairs to them over the years, like a new set of button eyes. But this injury was beyond him. So he Googled and found The Doll Mercantile.

"I wanted to get him fixed. You’ve got to take care of your creatures, and your teddy bear is your creature. You don't throw your creatures away."

He received one of the bears when he was a little boy in Billings, Montana. When his father lost his mill job, the family roamed the country in search of work, Teddy in tow. They finally settled in San Francisco, where Kelly would tote the bear with him to his aunt's apartment around the corner to watch the puppet show "Kukla Fran and Ollie" on her black-and-white TV. He said his aunt and mother were afraid he would lose his beloved bear on the walk over. So they bought a spare that sat on the couch at his aunt's place and served as a replacement for him to hug in front of the TV.

Kelly, 75, admits he has, on occasion, taken comfort with his bears, even as an adult.

"They’re my pals," he said. "They’ve been around a long time, through thick and thick, and I think, a lot of thick."

You can reach Staff Writer Meg McConahey at 707-521-5204 or [email protected]. OnTwitter @megmcconahey.

Features, The Press Democrat

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