Ruth Messmer Florist: a family affair
BY EVAN WILLIAMS ewilliams@florida-weekly.com
Ah, the sweet, potent odor of botany. That's the first thing you might sense, walking into Ruth Messmer Florist, Inc. on Cleveland Avenue, a business that is now reaching into its 55th year in Fort Myers, and third generation of owners, still making fresh, dried and silk floral displays and fruit baskets.

FLORIDA WEEKLY PHOTOS EVAN WILLIAMS Heather Messmer of Ruth Messmer Florist, Inc.

"It's like a new beginning," second generation owner Heather Messmer, 55, said. "We're starting over with the third generation."

Her daughter Jessica, 29, is now also an owner, working alongside her mother in the business Ruth and Jeff Messmer opened on the corner of Colonial Boulevard and Cleveland Avenue, in 1953.

"(At the time), that was the end of Fort Myers," Messmer said. "It was quaint and everybody knew each other. It was more on the personal level. I remember when (Cleveland Avenue) was two lanes."

Five years later, they reopened the shop in the same location it is at now, closer to downtown Fort Myers, on Cleveland Avenue. In the 1990s, the Messmers opened a second location on College Parkway.

Ruth Messmer (a well known community figure in her time, in part for becoming a member of the all-male Fort Myers Rotary Club) met Jeff when she worked for him at his original floral store in Chester, Penn.

Heather grew up among the bustle of bridal bouquets and holiday gift baskets between years spent at Fort Myers High School, and then Edison College, but she was prepped for eventual ownership in her teens, when her parents trusted her with the shop by herself for the first time.

"My parents left me here and went on vacation when I was 18," she said. "I just remember there was a huge wedding and I had to call (my mother) when she got to the hotel and ask her to tell me how to make something."

Other humbling experiences ensued: once, she said, a funeral director asked her to make a bleeding heart out of roses and chrysanthemums for a funeral, but she mistakenly made a broken heart instead.

"He really came down on me," she said.

Later, she was allowed to tend the shop for longer periods of time, and as the oldest child, ended up taking over her father's bookkeeping responsibilities when he became ill. When her mother died in 2000, Heather assumed ownership with her brother. And finally last November, she bought out her brother's share, becoming the sole owner before asking her daughter to join her.

"It's a hard business," she said. "You're dealing with all kind of emotions - happiness, sadness, death, marriages. You're dealing with it all."

As a relief from the pressures of long hours at the flower shop, Heather likes to spend time outdoors, especially raising cows. She used to lease 86 acres behind Home Depot on I-75 and Colonial Blvd., she said, where she kept 15 cows. But she sold all but two bovines because the area was being developed. She keeps both on her land in rural Alva. She can still ride a horse, although no longer owns any, and might occasionally be seen driving her massive Dodge Ram pickup truck.

"I look tiny in it," she said. She's pleased by the idea of her daughter's children eventually taking over the business as fourth generation owners in the years to come, but said it remains to be seen.

"You've gotta like to work," she added. "You don't have a life during the Holidays."

Jessica Messmer, who has two young children, said ultimately the choice won't be hers to make.

"That's going to be their decision," she said. "If they want to, it would be up to them."