Editorial: Thank you, Enrica, for more than four decades of service

A pretty Italian girl in Germany met up with a GI at a U.S. Army night club and in two weeks they were married.
This is the beginning of the journey that brought Enrica Hensley to Belleville, MI, where she has served the community for more than four decades.
She has just finished the exhausting season of prom dresses. Enrica measures and stitches by hand and by machine to make everyone look exactly right.
She recalls when the work she did at home outgrew her space. She needed a shop and she went to Moss Brothers, the men’s wear business on Main Street. She liked their windows and so she told them she wanted to buy their building.
She seemed naïve to them, but she wasn’t. She was serious. She paid off the mortgage in seven years for the building with the nice windows, constructed in 1919. She runs the oldest, continuously run business on Main Street.
Her customers and her customers’ children and their children know where to go when something needs to be adjusted, or mended, or hemmed to perfection.
She is active in St. Anthony Church and prays for the dead that she sees listed in the Independent each week. She takes rush orders to make the burial clothes just right. But don’t try to run off without paying for her work. She won’t let go of your garment, even if you punch her in the face. She’s one tough cookie and we are so happy to have her on Main Street.