Cliff Buchan
News Editor

The last member of the Hendrickson family who worked and grew up in the Forest Lake restaurant business during parts of four decades has died.

Helen ìLonnieî Ermatinger, 87, died Monday, May 20, 2006 at Comforts of Home in Hugo from COPD and Alzheimerís diseases. She was a former resident of Forest Lake and White Bear Lake.

Lonnie Hendrickson was born on March 10, 1919 to Steve and Eugenie Hendrickson who owned and managed the Park Hotel in Forest Lake from 1918 to 1932 when Steve passed away.

Eugenie continued to operate the hotel with the help of her four children, Ruthie, Lonnie, Steve Jr. and Mary. The hotelís name was subsequently changed to Hendricksonís Hotel and Cafe.

The business was located on the corner of US-61 and E. Broadway Ave. where the Upperdeck is today.

In addition to the hotel business and cafe, the Hendricksons also managed the pavilion, a popular roller skating rink and dance hall next to the Forest Lake public beach area.

In 1945, Eugenie sold the business to Burt and Elsie Vogel who changed the name of the establishment to Vogelís. They also became owners of what was called Skateland.

She was the last of the Hendrickson children to pass on.

She is survived by her two children from her first marriage, James Yale and Penny (Bob) OíBrien, and two grandchildren, Marcus James OíBrien and Regan OíBrien.

During the 1950s, Lonnie formed a club of Forest Lake women who needed a break from housekeeping and caring for kids. It was called the Evening Away From It All Club.

In 1968 she served on the Forest Lake Golden Jubilee Committee. In the 1980s she joined a group of like minded women working at Field Schlick Department Store and found many social gatherings with what was called the M & M Girls, the Menopause Maidens.

Her work experience was far from limited to her early duties at the family businesses.

She also worked for the Twin Cities Wholesale Grocery, Van De Kamps Bakery, Forest Lake Bakery, Skogmos Department Store, Der Lach Haus Restaurant in Forest Lake and was a survey taker at Maplewood Mall and a food sample demonstrator at area grocery stores.

In talking about their mother, James and Penny said they will remember her as a loving and independent woman who would travel on her own by train to California and learned to drive a car when she was 40.

ìLonnie loved Forest Lake, the place, its people and her memories between 1919 and 2006,î the two said.

ìAll she really wanted out of life was what she did not have a child whose home was a hotel and cafe: a home, loving husband, family and furniture.î

There was no formal funeral service or memorial service for Helen ìLonnieî Ermatinger who chose to be cremated. A private interment is planned. She was preceded in death by her second husband, Frank, her parents, three siblings and one daughter, Carol.

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Forest Lake Times
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Forest Lake, MN 55025
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