Muffy Meisenzahl holds a milk bottle from Meisenzahl’s Dairy during her presentation. Photo by Deb Smith
BY DEB AND TIM SMITH
On Thursday April 3, the Mendon Community Center was the site of a presentation hosted by the Honeoye Falls-Mendon Historical Society. Billed as “Honeoye Falls Musings with Muffy Meisenzahl” a similar word that certainly could have been applied to the evening’s proceedings was “amusing” as Muffy had the crowd laughing throughout much of her presentation.
As is the norm for the monthly sessions of the Historical Society, the evening begins with a short business meeting conducted by society President Drew Saur. One exciting note from this component was that Drew highlighted the progress of the Historical Society Museum renovation which will lead to a grand reopening sometime later this year.
Drew then went on to introduce the evening’s feature speaker saying… Mary Louise “Muffy” Meisenzahl has dedicated over three decades to public service, leaving an indelible mark on Monroe County and beyond. Known for her unwavering commitment, Muffy’s career spans a range of impactful roles that highlight her leadership, innovation, and deep sense of community.
A resident of Honeoye Falls, Muffy began her public service journey as a village trustee before serving as Mayor of Honeoye Falls from 1981 to 1990. Her dedication to her hometown set the stage for a distinguished career in emergency management and public safety.
Drew went on to thank everyone for coming, mentioning that this was the largest crowd the society had drawn since the pandemic. All of those filing in could see that Muffy was well-prepared with a table full of visual aides from her personal Honeoye Falls museum, many of which we’ll be detailing in this article.
Muffy initiated the presentation by sharing that, “My parents [educators and long-time HF residents Chuck and Sally] always said to me, ‘Life is about relationships and that’s really why I’m standing here tonight. Everything I’ve done has been about including people and building relationships and connecting people across various lines and boundaries for the general community benefit.”
Her first prop was an issue of the March 27 Sentinel which Muffy picked up saying, “Deb & Tim Smith are here. I didn’t bring the soccer ball with your signature on it and the rest of the team’s from the year you won the championship.” Muffy’s father Chuck Meisenzahl was a phys ed teacher and longtime Varsity Boys soccer coach including the years when Tim played.
Muffy then flipped the Sentinel over saying, “On the back Tim & Deb start their HF Pub Crawl by coming south on 65 into the Village.” Muffy then picks up a clearly worn antique-looking door handle and says, “This is the door handle from one of those pubs,” and asks, “can anyone guess which establishment this handle is from?”
Someone does correctly remember that the first pub visitors to the village would have encountered back in the day was the Walk-In Tavern (aka the Rat Trap) which was located at 10 N. Main St. in the space that is currently occupied by Feisty’s gift shop.
Muffy next produces a copy of the first Honeoye Falls-Lima yearbook which would have been the 1970 edition. Muffy’s senior class was the first one to graduate from the newly merged HF-L school district. In terms of yearbooks, the new “Liaison” replaced the “Hornet” in Honeoye Falls and the “Ska-hase-ga-oan” in Lima.
The new black and gold school colors were reflected on the cover and the particular book Muffy was holding featured the embossed name of class president Ann Oppedisano. While explaining that the book had been given to her by Ann’s husband upon her passing in 2019, Muffy acknowledged Ann’s sister Jane Oppedisano McGory who was in the audience.
Muffy next mentioned an experience that had been orchestrated by HFMHS President Drew Saur who sent her an internet link which she clicked on having no idea where it would send her. It turned out to be an emotional click, as for the first time in years Muffy heard the voice of her father preserved in a 2002 audio recording where Chuck Meisenzahl had delivered a “Short History of the Local Rotary.”
Next Muffy held up a copy of the April 3 issue of the Sentinel. The timing on this was doubly ironic. If you’re cross-referencing the dates in this article you may have picked up on the fact that this issue had just come out the day of the presentation. Totally unbeknownst to us, we had set Muffy up for what would be two components of her presentation. This also proves to show that Muffy was adeptly shifting the contents of her show right to the very last minute.
As mentioned earlier, we were, and still are, in the midst of a series of articles on Honeoye Falls pubs and taverns. As of April 3, our pub crawl had made its way to 7 West Main Street, the current address of Cosmo’s and the previous address of TJ’s Lounge which had been the topic of that week’s article.
TJ, Tom Jamieson, had managed to lure an array of high-profile athletes into his establishment during the 1980’s. The picture, which coincidently managed to set up Muffy, was one that featured Pittsburgh Steeler Rocky Bleier, along with locals John Broomfield, Otie Banser, and TJ.
Showing the picture to her audience, Muffy queried the crowd saying, “Who knows who in the room is here [in the picture]? John Broomfield and his wife, Claire, were prominently sitting in the front row and John, who was inducted into the HF-L Alumni Hall of Fame last fall, was immediately recognized by several members of the laughing crowd.
So while that move on Muffy’s part was spontaneous, she had no way of knowing that Otie Banser, who passed away in 2023, would have his picture show up in the paper on the day of her presentation. Now really… what are the odds?! But Muffy already had an Otie story up her sleeve so she used the picture as a springboard.
“One time Mom and Dad were in Florida visiting Ray Milne,” Muffy’s story begins. “They were on a beach walk and they came back to the parking lot and there was a car parked right next to my Mom and Dad’s navy blue Ford station wagon, which had an Everett Lewis [former HF Ford dealership] sticker on the back. The stranger leaning against the other car asked, ‘Do you own this car?’ [gesturing toward Muffy’s parents’ car].”
“My mother thought the guy had hit it or something. Dad said, ‘Yeah, this is our car.’”
“Having recognized the Everett Lewis sticker, the stranger asked, ‘You’re from Honeoye Falls? Any chance you know Otis Banser?’” [While Otis was his given name, he was universally known in town as Otie.]
Muffy’s Dad went on to explain that he knew Otie well, having coached him in high school. “Well, how do you know Otie?” Coach Meisenzahl went on to ask.
“He was my roommate in college!” was the surprise answer. Turns out they had lost contact with each other and this turned into a surprise opportunity to get back in touch.
Muffy continues the story saying, “So I get a phone call from a payphone somewhere on the beach [in Florida]… Can you get me Otie Banser’s phone number?” is the question proffered by Muffy’s Dad.
Doesn’t this make for a great small-town story? Two long lost college roommates are reunited when a total stranger recognizes a Honeoye Falls auto dealership sticker on a car at a beach parking lot in Florida.
For her next prop, Muffy holds up a glass bottle identifying it by saying, “This is from Falls Dairy, from Honeoye Falls, 37 North Main Street.” That dairy operated until around 1980 and milk bottles at that time were picked up and reused. To remind people about this, written on the bottle was “I wanna go home. Return Me.”
The bottle Muffy had brought in was a small one, the variety that would have been used for school lunches before the advent of the waxed cardboard carton. Those were an upgrade at the time because if they dropped, they wouldn’t break.
“My mother told me you should always have party favors,” Muffy said next, and went on to hold up a plastic bag completely filled with milk bottle caps which were the ones that originally came on the Falls Dairy milk bottles.
“So If anybody would like, before you go, you are welcome to have a milk cap from Falls Dairy. If you had home delivery, these were the milk caps on the bottle tops.”
The next props in the show were a couple versions of the Honeoye Falls Fire Department’s Iron Fireman, the iconic symbol of the HFFD, a replica of which adorns the steeple of the Village Hall on East Street.
The first Iron Fireman was carved and painted by a former Village of HF employee named Roy Nichols. Muffy described Roy as a master craftsman who served the Village for decades, always displaying his Iron Fireman creations in the windows of his Village truck.
She also showed a less colorful shiny silver Iron Fireman. “Jim Laemlein made this cookie cutter in his basement tin shop,” Muffy said, “and [his wife] Wanda used it to make cookies during the 1988 Honeoye Falls Sesquicentennial which they frosted in the colors of the fireman.”
Next Muffy produced milk bottle #2 of the presentation and this one was embossed with the logo of Meisenzahl’s Dairy which was located at 736 Portland Avenue in the city and run by her Grandpa Meisenzahl. There was also a Meisenzahl Dairy outlet at 3660 West Henrietta Road which was operated by Grandpa Meisenzahl’s brother.
This milk bottle was used to facilitate the story of how her parents met at SUNY Cortland. They first crossed paths going in opposite directions on a staircase and Muffy said, “My mother told the story about how she saw my father, her stomach flipped, and she said, ‘That’s the guy I’m gonna marry.”’
When her mother went home that Thanksgiving with this new romance in her life, her grandfather asked if it was serious, and she replied, “It could be.”
Grandpa’s response was, “You probably don’t even know how to spell his name.” This was a challenge to which Muffy’s mom quickly responded by rapidly rattling off the letters.
Of course there was one secret not shared with grandpa. Muffy’s mother didn’t let on that, “Growing up, that milk bottle was on our table every day. Of course I knew how to spell his name!” This was one of so many times when Muffy had the crowd in stitches.
The presentation ended with a Q & A session of which we’ll share a few highlights. As we are typing this, we’ve just received a message from HFMHS President Drew Saur who informs us that this entire presentation is now available online at… https://hfmhistorical.org/on-youtube/
Some additional topics you can hear Muffy respond to through the website include…
* What prompted Muffy to get into politics in the first place.
* Muffy’s handling of the situation when the East Street bridge across Honeoye Creek, right in downtown HF, collapsed on April 1, 1982.
* What Muffy’s proudest accomplishment was as Mayor.
* What Muffy’s locally flavored gift was to New York City Mayor Ed Koch.
* What was Muffy’s take on Hi Clements, a flamboyant local character in the late 1970’s about whom we will be publishing a series later this year.
When Muffy finished speaking we included ourselves amongst many attendees who certainly felt like they would have enjoyed hearing more of her stories for another hour or so. The whole experience was a very interactive one with a great degree of back-and-forth banter as Muffy engaged her audience. We’re thankful that the Honeoye Falls-Mendon Historical Society captured the entire evening for all posterity. It was absolutely a slice of small-town Americana made even more special by the fact that the small town being captured was our own.
