Mary Dyer kept Arcade’s griddles cooking over three generations

Southern Living magazine and the Food Network wanted Mary Dyer’s recipes. Some of her dishes, like sweet potato pancakes, were almost exotic, but most were what her boss called “just Southern-style cooking.”

Mrs. Dyer cooked for three generations of owners at the Arcade restaurant, starting in 1972 and ending two months ago when she had a stroke. She was recovering from the stroke when she died Sunday of a heart attack, ending a career that included bit parts in two Hollywood movies and a day-to-day world of griddles, skillets and satisfied customers.

Restaurant owner Harry Zepatos said Mrs. Dyer, who was 67, had worked half days in the months before her illness, teaching her fellow cooks “to learn how she did things.” It was for a clientele that Zepatos estimates is about half regulars and half tourists.

Many of the tourists were Elvis Presley fans, who quickly learned Elvis had a favorite booth near the back of the restaurant and a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich in his honor on the menu.

If Mrs. Dyer met Elvis, it wasn’t something she told her family. But she often served home cooking to Stax legend Rufus Thomas and told her daughters about visits to the Arcade by actors Danny DeVito and Terrence Howard and by a string of Memphis rap artists.

One of her three daughters, Pam Dyer, said it’s funny that anyone asked her mother for recipes. “She didn’t cook by recipe. She taught us to cook by taste. Everything we learned we had to learn by watching.” Her own first lesson at age 8 was making collard greens. “My mother used ham hocks, a little salt, a little sugar, a little crushed red pepper and a little bacon grease.” The main i nstruction was to start with a little of each. “You can always add more, but if you start with too much, you can’t take it away.”

The outcome was one that brought Buddy Loflin, owner of Loflin Safe and Lock Co., back almost every day. His wife was a nurse who often Mary Dyer had to work holidays, so Lof lin also persuaded Mrs. Dyer to cook some of her specialties to take home for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. Homemade dressing and gravy, sweet potato casserole and sometimes mashed potatoes were on those menus.

For her special attention, Loflin said he donated locksmith work to her family. In the restaurant, he and Mrs. Dyer “would spend time just visiting. She was just a good old country girl. She was a hard worker, and she was very dedicated to her customers, and she gave a lot of guidance to the younger kids who worked back there. She wouldn’t hesitate to tell them the way she thought it should be. She was a fairly serious person.”

Daughter Pam said her mother grew up in Carrollton, Ga., and moved to Memphis in 1966 after her husband was killed in Vietnam.

In the beginning she worked seven days a week. Later, she cut back and even had time to appear as an extra in two made-in-Memphis movies in addition to her TV spot on the Food Network, said her daughter, who couldn’t remember the names of the movies.

Funeral arrangements are incomplete. Mrs. Dyer leaves two other daughters, April Smith and Nora Crowder of Memphis; five sisters, Sandra Wyatt, Nora Clark and Wanda Springer of Douglasville, Ga., Briggitte Turner of Carrollton, Ga., and Teresa Brown of Memphis, and three brothers, Rev. Willie Smith and Robert Dyer of Douglasville, Ga., and Adarian Dye of Lilburn, Ga.

Associated Press

JACKSON, Miss. — A onetime black nationalist was inaugurated as mayor of Mississippi’s capital city Monday, saying he wants Jackson to be a unified community where people of diverse backgrounds can make a living.

Chokwe Lumumba said developers who do business in the city need to work with contractors and subcontractors who live in Jackson. The city has a majority-black population and most of its officials are black, but its economic power struc- ture traditionally has been white.

Lumumba said he will resist the type of development that would drive up the cost of living.

“Gentrification is nothing but a war on the people who live in the city already,” said Lumumba, who was involved in a black nationalist group, the Republic of New Afrika, in the 1970s and ’80s.

More than 27 percent of Jackson residents live below the poverty line, and the city has hundreds of dilapidated or abandoned houses. Lumumba said he wants the city to attract new residents.