Remembering a Detroit baker who lived a quiet, decent life

Everything was the same and nothing was the same.

The sun hadn't even come up, yet Janice Maksimovski was back at work at Chene Modern Bakery on Detroit's west side. Back behind the familiar doughnut counter, back in that old, hot kitchen.

The bakery had been closed for the past two weeks after her husband, the man who spent more than three decades as its baker, suddenly died right in front of her.

Vasko Maksimovski hadn't been sick. The 60-year-old never showed symptoms of anything wrong. His heart attack was shockingly swift and unexpected.

For two weeks, the family mourned in a daze and wondered if, when and how they'd reopen their business, where they'd worked side-by-side for years with the man now gone.

Right before Easter, they decided it was time to go back.

"It's very hard," Janice said, crying as she stood at the edge of the kitchen door. "Very, very hard going back there and not seeing my husband there."

He was never famous. His death didn't make the news. For most people he was just the guy baking the bread in the back room of a neighborhood store.

But like countless neighborhood mom-and-pop business owners in Detroit, he worked hard to provide his family and his neighborhood a better life. And like them, his passing went largely unnoticed because he lived a quiet, anonymous life.

But to the family that's missing a husband and father, and the neighborhood that lost a fixture, his absence changed their world.

"My husband was a strong man," said his 56-year-old widow. "He'd say, 'Life goes on.' But it's hard. This is the hardest thing I've ever had to go through."

Ethnic breads and sweets

Chene Modern Bakery is nowhere near Chene Street, and isn't all that modern.

The ethnic breads and sweets still served here are the same they've sold for most of a century. Kolache with apricot or raspberry filling. Powder-dusted angel wings. Honey-rum and cherry-walnut babkas. And a Seven Sisters layer cake made using a 100-year-old family recipe.

Every morning the cookies, bread and doughnuts are baked fresh. And every night the remaining food is given away — sometimes to the homeless people who knock at the back door in the middle of the night, knowing the bakers are there.

Their prices aren't very modern, either. Cookies are $6.99 a pound, same for a dozen doughnuts. A loaf of bread costs $2.49.

"We keep our prices down," Janice said. "We don't raise them every month, every year. If we were in the suburbs, we could charge a lot more. But we don't want to rip anyone off."

The bakery began in the 1930s on Chene Street in Detroit's old Poletown, then moved a couple decades later — along with its name — to a newer, growing Polish neighborhood on the edges of Warrendale.

By 1980, the old owners were eager to retire, and the newly married Maskimovskis bought it and made it the family business.

For years, the routine was always the same. Vasko would come in at midnight and work until dawn baking the next day's sweets with Janice's brother, Jim. Janice would come in around 5 a.m. and open the doors to serve the Dearborn Ford workers coming in before their shift. All the kids in the family grew up working here.

At one time, they needed nine bakers in the back to fill the shelves every day. Lately, it is down to three. The neighborhood is much emptier and poorer than it was, and demand has dropped. Three-quarters of the customers coming in pay with a Bridge Card, and there's never a shortage of homeless people to give the leftovers from the day.

But they still have the old-timers who drive in every week, the loyal customers who got their treats here as they grew up and who value a vanishing breed like a mom-and-pop bakery.

"They don't make rye bread like that at Walmart," said Irene Iwaniusz, 57, of Westland. "It's a good, old-fashioned bakery. The recipes have been in the family for a very long time. When you find a bakery like this, you keep coming."

Ron Balint, next in line, drove over from Dearborn for some fresh bread and doughnuts. "I've been doing this, what, 25, 30 years," he said. "I'd say this place is pretty close to one of the last ones like it."

Working the night shift

Back in the kitchen, Jim Acovski stood at the end of his all-night shift in a ragged white T-shirt, his beard dusted with powdered sugar, his eyes a mix of sorrow and fatigue.

For 35 years, he and his brother-in-law Vasko would work at a long, ancient wood table rolling dough, face-to-face across from each other, talking all night. They were like brothers, everyone said. And the kitchen is where Vasko's absence was really felt.

The bakery was truly their lives. Acovski was only 17 when his sister and her new husband made him an owner. He and Vasko spent their lives since then laboring in the heat of the kitchen, every night but one each week. In the old days, they'd do it for 15 hours a night.

"I missed out on a lot of family stuff, like all of us did," he said regretfully. "We used to be here all the time."

It wasn't just family that was mourning.

"He was like father to me," said Ilo Andon in a Macedonian accent. The 36-year-old baker, who has worked here a dozen years, is the only other one working in the back now with Acovski. "We all used to be laughing and stuff. Now it's just me and him working. It's hard. We don't talk. We're busier."

They shortened their hours a little bit over the years, and they've trimmed them even more since Vasko died. No more opening at 5 a.m. Now it'll be at 7. They'll start closing on Sundays and Mondays. And the midnight shift now starts three hours later.

As hard as it's been, there was never any real doubt that the family would come back to work. When they closed for two weeks to mourn, they were flooded at home with calls from worried customers who thought they might be gone for good.

"Where am I going to go?" Janice asked. "This is all I know how to do. Everything we have is from the bakery. And we love what we do."

A host of admirers

It was Good Friday, and the little bell above the front door rang often as customers filled the bakery.

The hectic pace of the day was better than it had been earlier in the week, when there'd be long stretches of solitude and silence between visits from customers, which left the family alone with their thoughts. The foot traffic, at least, was distracting.

One by one, nearly every customer came up to tell Janice they'd heard the news and wanted to express their sympathy. Some shared memories, or swapped stories with each other of how long they've been coming here, as if affirming that this place was a small touchstone they had in common in their lives.

It was surprising how many people found out about Vasko's passing, almost as remarkable as how many came to the funeral, even though there was never a death notice or obituary printed about him.

Yet he drew admirers because he was — in his own small, unglamorous way — a cog in the life of the area, a neighbor who deserved recognition for simply living a decent, honorable life.

Here, then, is an obituary for him.

Vasko Maksimovski was born in 1955 in Macedonia, where he worked as a welder until meeting Janice, a Detroiter who was vacationing there. Within three months, they were married; in less than a year, they were back living in Detroit, and soon after, they bought an old Polish bakery where he worked hard until the end.

He died March 16 at his home with his wife by his side, and his funeral was held three days later at the Nativity of the Virgin Mary Macedonian Orthodox Church in Sterling Heights, where a thousand people passed through during the course of the visitation.

He is survived by two children he put through college because, he told them, he didn't want them to toil away their lives in a hot bakery like he did. Their daughter, Jasmina, is now an attorney; their son, Christopher, is an embryologist. And both still work sometimes at the bakery.

He's also survived by a brother-in-law who just lost his best friend, a baker who feels like he lost a father, and his wife of 35 years, who loved him deeply.

"He was perfect," Janice said. "He lived for our children and he lived for me. He even died perfect — with his family at home."

Columnist John Carlisle writes about interesting people and places in Michigan. His stories can be found at freep.com/carlisle. Follow him on Twitter @_johncarlisle. Contact him: jcarlisle@freepress.com.