Cafe’s pies bake in good bit of love

Matriarch, 103, is star of eatery where family, community gather for many traditions.

With the annual mathematical celebration of Pi Day on March 14, there has been a rush on the pies at Woodruff ’s Cafe & Pie Shop near Monroe, Virginia. Mary Fannie Woodruff and her daughters offer apple, pecan, buttermilk, sweet potato, coconut custard and lemon meringue.

But most people drop by year-round for another reason: to spend time with 103-year-old Mary Woodruff.

It was 1952 when Woodruff and her husband, James Earl Woodruff, opened a grocery store and gas station in the building. The couple raised five children in the apartment upstairs, and Mary Woodruff often spent busy summer afternoons pumping gas for vacationers.

When her husband died in 1998, she was happy to have a new reason to spend her days inside her old shop after her daughter Angela Scott turned the place into a cafe.

“I do love pie,” said Woodruff. “But more than anything, I like to sit and talk to the customers.”

Woodruff lives across the street with daughter Darnell Winston, near the site where her husband’s grandfather, Wyatt Woodruff, opened a blacksmith shop and became the first African American man to own a business in Amherst County, Scott said.

During the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, the Woodruff family experienced difficult times, with some white families avoiding the store, Mary Woodruff said. Her twin daughters were the only black children at the elementary school 3 miles up the road.

“Looking back, I sometimes wonder how in the world we made it,” added Winston’s twin, Darnell Hill, 69. “We were 7 years old, and we were used to being protected and loved by our family. But my parents weren’t afraid — they thought we should go to school in our community like the other kids.”

The work inside the store takes place in the kitchen from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, as Woodruff, her daughters and Scott’s husband, Larry, mix filling and roll out pie crusts.

“Growing up, we always had fresh pie or cobbler at home,” Scott said. “Mama used fresh berries and peaches from our orchard, and of course, we always had those cobblers with ice cream.”

Scott, who has a background as a restaurant waitress and hostess, said she decided to open a cafe in her parents’ old store after she attended a family reunion and learned more about her ancestry.

“I can’t explain it other than I felt I had a calling,” she said. “I just knew that I was supposed to do it. There’s so much history here.”

“And a whole lot of love,” her mother adds. “Who doesn’t love pie?”

CONTRIBUTED BY ANGELA SCOTT Woodruff’s Cafe & Pie Shop in Monroe, Va., got its start in 1952 as a grocery and gas station opened by Mary Fannie Woodruff and her husband.