Ten years after closing, Pinder’s still one of Culver’s most beloved eateries, PART 1 of 2

April 16, 2012

Pinder's restaurant in the 1970s.

It may be hard for many Culverites to believe, but it's been 10 years (or will be, this fall) since Ed and Lora Pinder and family closed the doors for the last time on one of the most beloved local eateries in most residents' memories. Ed told the Citizen at the time it had "even older men my age" crying. "There were lots of tears," he said.

And no wonder. While everyone surely had a favorite dish at Pinder's Restaurant (at the confluence of Ohio, Main, and Davis Streets, home of the Marmont Grille today), its most endearing quality emanated from the family itself, whose mixture of small-town friendliness, humor, and genuine care for others made Pinder's the proverbial place where everybody really did know your name – or seemed to. While the term "family restaurant" is a stylistic designation, it applied at Pinder's on multiple levels: the family operated it, and the entire community, by extension, seemed part of the family.

Ed and Lora Pinder met in high school in nearby Fulton, Indiana. They began dating towards the end of their junior year and were married in January, 1955. Ed taught math and physics in Kewanna for seven years, after attending Purdue and graduating from Manchester College. While teaching, he received a National Science Foundation grant to work on his Master's degree at Middle Tennessee University.

When Culver Military Academy assistant math department head Al Donnelly suffered a heart attack in the middle of the term, Ed -- who had taught advanced algebra already at Culver's summer school for a few years -- was called and asked to join the CMA faculty, which he did for the next five years.

"They treated me well," he recalls. "The kids were great."

He didn't enjoy barracks inspection and missed the camaraderie with parents he'd experienced in public education, so Ed spent his last eight teaching years at Culver Community High School, winding up that part of his career in 1977.

Lora well remembers the fateful day the seed of taking on a restaurant was planted for the family.

"Ed was umpiring a ball game," she recalls of a 1972 conversation, "and Wally Speery, who ran a restaurant (at the future site of Pinder's) said, 'Ed, you should buy a restaurant.' Wally wanted to go fishing in Texas! His wife did all the work in the restaurant, and she didn’t want to sell. He talked to us a number of times. Our kids were getting the age -- Lizz, Julie, and Cheryl -- where it would be kind of nice to have a summer job.”

Any thoughts of restaurant ownership were put on hold when the Pinders’ daughters' friend Johnny Dewitt called and said daughters Julie and Cheryl had been hit by a car.

"They were both covered with sheets," remembers Ed. "Lora said, 'Please God, don't let them be dead.'"

Both parents today laugh at the memory of Julie's first words, once the sheet was moved aside: "Is my face okay?"

After some extensive surgery and recovery, both girls -- and their faces -- were indeed okay, and the family began to turn its attention to the possibility of running an eatery, in earnest.

In the future Pinder's building, Sperry's had started as a bait shop, notes Ed Pinder Jr., which also served sandwiches.

"They had a window," he adds, "and no seating. Margeurite Sperry made sandwiches and people liked them, so they expanded into the kitchen. Sperry's was the name of the restaurant. They had had it for nine years when we bought it (in 1973). Sperrys built that building, and they owned that property. They also expanded into the kitchen and had that little dining room, which they put on after five or six years. It seated about 40."

In those days, says Ed Sr., Culver's dining needs were filled primarily by the Culver Inn (on the Academies' campus), A&W Root Beer Stand, M & M Restaurant on Main Street, Three Sisters on State Road 17, Jobos Pizza on Lake Shore Drive, the Dewitt's bowling alley, and the Corner Tavern, also on Main, which would be Pinder's main competition.

By the fall of 1972, Ed and Lora arranged a family gathering.
"We got the kids together," says Lora, "and said, 'If we get this restaurant, you will be wherever we are. None of them ever reneged (on agreeing to it)."

The family called Ed's parents, Fay and Harold, who at around 60 years old were ready for a break from their work at Winamac Coil Spring in Kewanna, where Lora had also been working in the office. They were able to move into the house adjacent to the restaurant itself, where they lived during their tenure at Pinder's (Ed and Lora have lived in their home on Lake Shore Drive for the past 46 years).

The family began to advertise not only locally, but in surrounding communities, leading up to and past the March 1, 1973 opening of Pinder's. They used their network of friends and acquaintances in Culver, Fulton, Rochester, and Kewanna, not to mention the many students Ed had taught. So effective were their efforts, says Lora, that one longtime Culverite complained he couldn't get a seat with "all these people" at the restaurant.

Later that year, Lora found juggling bookkeeping at the factory in Kewanna, and restaurant work, too demanding, so she came on at Pinder's full-time.

"Sperry's had a very successful restaurant when we bought it," she notes. "I've cooked all my life, and Margeurite helped teach us to cook. The only thing we changed when we came in was, they had a church-style coffee pot that sat there all day, and the coffee was never good. I had a coffee service come in so we had good coffee.”
Margeurite Sperry, who stayed on initially to cook, made a variety of salads including bean and pasta, and many Pinder’s recipes used over the years were hers, says Lora.

“The fried chicken batter had to be just the perfect thickness. She stayed with us and was watching the business grow."

"We doubled our business about four years in a row," Ed adds. "We hit a certain peak with the number of tables we had."

The iconic Pinder's logo, which graced not only the restaurant but numerous advertisements and billboards over the years, was the result of a trip to the library to research the family crest from Ireland, with a griffon added alongside. A Burr Oak man came up with the memorable lettering and initial sign, which Ed says eventually fell apart and was replaced by "a pretty hokey sign that flashed at night!"
Initially, the restaurant's famous chicken was the most popular dish, with "all you can eat" white fish on Fridays and chicken on Saturdays gaining quickly.

"Everything was fried at first," Lora explains, "and we'd have luncheon and dinner specials: home cooking type things like chicken and noodles, beef ribs, meat loaf, and hot beef sandwiches. We made a big turkey breast and used the broth for the gravy."

Food preparation was a family affair as well, she notes.

"Peggy made all the stuffing, Julie did the salads and made cookies. Peggy did a lot of desserts: cakes and cheesecakes, and some salads after Julie moved away. Julie made most of the dressings."

Ed and Lora's future daughter-in-law Peggy was 14 when she started working at Pinder's, which at the time was just four years into its existence. Future husband Eddie (Ed Jr.) had started there at age 10, the first year. While the two knew each other from school, Eddie says they "really got to know each other while working at the restaurant. We dated six months before we got married, but we worked together four years before we were married!"

"We even worked on our wedding day," laughs Peggy, who also worked the day before the couple's children were born, something Lora did the day before giving birth to daughter Lizz.

"We had to get married on Sundays," says Julie, "because we had to work around the restaurant schedule! The guys we married had to be pretty good sports."

"The kids all grew up working," says Ed, adding those "kids" grew up -- in the restaurant -- to have their own children, who played there after closing.

"Our whole life was there," says Julie. "Showers, family get-togethers."

In fact, laughs Julie, even today, "Whenever I have an anxiety dream, it's always a restaurant dream!"

By the time Pinder's closed, Ed and Lora had four grandchildren working for them, in addition to nieces and nephews. Both Eddie and Peggy's son and Julie's son complained when the restaurant closed too soon for them to work there as well.

Next week: Remembering the “extended” Pinder’s family of customers, unusual memories, and the restaurant’s final days.