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Serving Northern St. Louis County, Minnesota

It was everyone’s favorite hangout

Dave Anderson recalls the Marttila family and their legacy on Tower’s Main Street

Jodi Summit
Posted 7/20/22

TOWER- While everyone who has lived in Tower for any length of time has stories about Marttila Drug, over 60 area residents got the chance to learn more about the Marttila family’s long ties to …

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It was everyone’s favorite hangout

Dave Anderson recalls the Marttila family and their legacy on Tower’s Main Street

Posted

Dave AndersonTOWER- While everyone who has lived in Tower for any length of time has stories about Marttila Drug, over 60 area residents got the chance to learn more about the Marttila family’s long ties to Tower during a talk sponsored by the Tower-Soudan Historical Society.
Dave Anderson, a descendent of the Konst Marttila family, has been researching his family and their more than 100-year history as business owners on Tower’s Main Street.
Konstantin “Konst” Marttila emigrated from Finland in 1890, just shy of 20 years old. He entered, as did so many during that time, at Ellis Island in New York, and first settled in Marquette, Mich.
“We think he was a miner,” said Anderson, which would explain why he decided to move to Tower, sometime before 1897.
His naturalization papers showed he was living in Tower in 1897, and it noted he was an “outstanding Finnlander.” Someone named Charles Johnson signed as a witness for Konst. Anderson speculated it may have been the same Charles Johnson whose “ghost sign” featuring an advertisement for Best Coffee, still marks the west side of a brick building (former barber shop) on Main Street today.
Konst opened his first store in 1903, but Anderson said he found the first evidence of the store in an advertisement in the Tower newspaper in 1908. The ad showed the store sold games, books, and musical instruments. That store was located on the south side of Main Street. By 1910, Konst was advertising “hot soda” and soft drinks, along with a confectionary and cigars. Hot soda is just what it sounded like, warmed-up fountain soda, Anderson said.
Konst married his wife Fanny Harma sometime between 1904 and 1911. Fanny would have been 16 in 1904. Fanny never worked in the store, because she never had learned English. In 1912, the couple welcomed twin daughters, Martha and Anderson’s grandmother Ellen.
In 1911, Konst opened the store in the building that later housed Marttila Drug (the current location of Ubetcha Antiques). Among the treats sold there was Duluth Ice Cream (now known as Bridgeman’s). That ice cream is now remembered from a “ghost” sign uncovered on the side of the building when current owners Charlie and Victoria Carlson installed new siding last year. They left the old sign, which is now showcased on the west side of the building.
Ice cream was a mainstay of the store, and by the 1940s, the store was being operated by two of Konst’s children, Walter and Martha, who started making their own ice cream, a tradition continued into the late 1980s.
“They would stay up late to make the ice cream,” Anderson said. “And they had to drive to the Twin Cities to get all the ingredients.”
Konst and Fanny lost their two youngest children, Billy, age three, and Helen, age six, in a boating accident in 1926, when a “rich guy from Chicago” hit the smaller boat the Marttila family was riding in, on Lake Vermilion.
“My grandmother Ellen was always worried she would die young, like her younger siblings,” said Anderson.
Martha and Ellen both graduated from the University of Minnesota with degrees in teaching in 1935.
A few years later, Walt graduated from the University of Minnesota with a degree in forestry, but then either enlisted or was drafted into WWII. He went on to fly 31 successful missions from the Grafton-Underwood Airbase in England as a B-17 navigator. The 5’3” airman was given the nickname “Shorty.”
The twins, Martha and Ellen, both started teaching once they graduated from college. Martha taught at the school on the Vermilion Reservation, and then in Tower-Soudan, retiring in 1973. Ellen taught for five years in Ely, but she was forced to retire in 1940 when she married Pela Anderson. At the time there was a state law that did not allow married women to be employed as teachers, said Anderson.
After the war, Walt returned to Tower with an English bride, Verena, and a son James. Verena’s mother also moved to Tower with the couple.
In 1946, Konst passed away, ten years after the death of his two youngest children. Walt and his wife Verena took over the store, with help from Martha when she wasn’t busy teaching.
After a few years, Walt went back to the University of Minnesota and earned his degree in pharmacy in 1955.
In 1958, the old store was moved half a block to make room for their new store, the city’s first (and only) pharmacy. The store opened on April 10, the same day Walt’s daughter Anne (Marttila) Wiermaa was born.
Martha worked part-time in the store while she was teaching, and then full-time after Verena died in 1971. In later years, Walt and Martha lived in the large, sunny apartment upstairs of the drugstore.
When asked about his favorite memories of the store, Anderson said when he was a child, his sister Cheryl Groth, Aunt Jill Phillips and he would really enjoy the milkshakes made by the wonderful employees Walt and Martha had working at the semi-circular lunch counters.
“Martha would also give us the unsold comic books and magazines that had their covers removed for return to the distributor,” he said. “We always had plenty to read back then. As an adult, I enjoyed bringing my children to visit Walt and Martha in their huge modern mid-century apartment above the drug store.”
More stories about Marttila’s can be found in “Lake Vermilion: Memories of the Early Days,” in a chapter titled “It was Tower’s Favorite Hangout.” The book was written by Marshall Helmberger and published by the Timberjay. It is available at the Timberjay in Tower, Piragis Second Floor Books in Ely, and several area businesses, and online at www.timberjay.com.