Those who served remember their servers
The restaurant has shut down, but the tips keep coming. There’s a place in the South Hills with a big back room, which is the last clue I can give you. Because the patrons who have made Thursday breakfasts there a very special tradition want to keep this between them and their waitresses. They fear the Internal Revenue Service might seek a cut from the gesture they’re making.
What they’re doing, these men who served, is remembering their servers. Members of Vietnam Veterans Inc. have been meeting every Thursday in this place for years now, and what started as a handful of guys has grown to 60, 80 or 100 men and women on any given morning.
Ed Blank, 76, of Mt. Lebanon told me about it. He was the movie and theater critic for The Pittsburgh Press until it tanked in 1992, and worked for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review another 14 years after that. Now he’s in about 15 organizations, nine of them veterans outfits, one of which is Vietnam Veterans Inc.
I worked with Mr. Blank for years and never knew he was a Vietnam veteran. “I put the whole thing aside for 46 years,” he said. But he went to a breakfast event five or six years ago and felt a renewed sense of pride for his time as a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army Signal Corps, putting up telephone poles and laying cable all over Vietnam circa 1967.
And so these weekly breakfasts. Chuck Chasler, 73, of Whitehall, who served in South Korea during the Vietnam War era, said the two young women who handle these morning meals are incredible.
“After about your second or third time there, they know your name and what you usually order,” Mr. Chasler said.
John Weinheimer, 73, of Brookline, who was a Marine in Vietnam during the Tet Offensive in 1968, agreed. The way these two women orchestrate a two-hour breakfast every week is nothing short of amazing to him. “They know what you’re going to order unless you change up. They remember 80 to 100 names. And they treat you like one of their relatives.”
As of Friday afternoon, about 50 veterans had contributed more than $3,000 to the suddenly jobless waitresses.
So when these men began talking among themselves, they agreed their mission was clear. Mr. Blank has the names of nearly 200 fellow veterans on an email roster. He started sending out notes about two and a half weeks ago, suggesting the vets ought to do right by these women who had always done right by them. And the checks started rolling in.
The vets split the money down the middle. Mr. Blank makes a trip to his neighborhood mailbox before the 4 p.m. pickup every day, mailing checks to each of the two women. Mr. Weinheimer has been doing the same thing electronically with any donations coming to him.
Mr. Chasler believes they have both a moral and civic responsibility to step up in times of crisis. “I’m sure they didn’t have a great cash reserve, but, for the most part, we’re in a pretty comfortable spot and we can help out.”
Mr. Weinheimer’s wife and children have been servers in their past and “I know they live on tips.” And so these women will be tipped during this down time, because the veterans figure their Thursday breakfast had been the restaurant’s biggest, and certainly its steadiest, return in any week.
I asked Mr. Blank to pass along my phone number to the waitresses but never heard from either of them. That’s OK. They don’t owe me anything. And when they and these vets can finally get together again, they can tell the vets themselves what this money meant to them and their loved ones during the pandemic.
They’ve been given the names of the men who gave, but the vets won’t know how much their brethren gave. Mr. Weinheimer figures, “If you give me five dollars, that’s great. If you give me $500, that’s great.”
As of Friday afternoon, Mr. Blank said, about 50 veterans and spouses had contributed more than $3,000 to the suddenly jobless waitresses. That shows how good they are, and that applies to both ends of the transaction.