Remarkable Lampasans
Former cafe owner still serving
by Bobbye Alexander Behlau

Jean Withers is a former cafe owner in Lampasas.

After a recent dinner with friends, we decided to go somewhere for a piece of pie. The couple with us commented it was too bad Jean's Café was no longer open because it used to serve great pie.

One of them questioned what had happened to Jean. I got a rush of adrenalin because I knew what had happened to Jean: She is my weekly companion and helper. Nearly three years ago when we first moved back to Lampasas, I had asked around to find someone to help me with housecleaning. A 90-plus-year-old friend recommended Jean Withers.

When Jean first came to my house, I was amazed to discover she was near my age. From my friend's description, I had expected a young woman filled with energy and enthusiasm. She hadn't been wrong about the energy and enthusiasm. Though I try to help her, she can work circles around me.

From snatches of conversation we had as we worked, I gathered Jean hadn't had an easy life, and I was curious about the source of her energy and positive attitude.

Bobbye Alexander Behlau

When I sat down with Jean for an interview, she was pleased to recall that the 20 years owning her café near Rollins Brook Community Hospital were among the happiest in her life.

Buying the café had not been Jean's idea. It was a surprise from her husband, Earl Withers, who thought it would be a good way to keep their 14 children occupied (seven his, seven hers). The only trouble was that Earl's job as a construction supervisor for Guyco Inc. frequently took him out of town. The café was pretty much left to Jean and three employees who kept it open 24 hours a day. The kids came in after school when they were free.

She remembers the menu that was popular with townspeople: a full breakfast, a plate lunch with specialties each day and a la carte at night. Her best-selling lunch plate was liver and onions.

Alas, I was disappointed to learn that the pies for which she was famous were baked by Sara Lee.

Jean did add her special touches, such as sprinkling cinnamon and brown sugar on top of the apple pies.

Some of her regular customers were Jack Nobles, Claude and Wanda Meyers, Wayne Faught, Steve Shimko, Rosemary Bishop, the Canales boys, and Marie and Choc Gillen. She even recalled three famous visitors: Willie Nelson, Moe Bandy and Dale McBride, who dropped in more than once.

Jean Withers, circa 1983.

When I asked more about her life history, she said she had been blessed with good health and plenty of energy, a necessity to survive as a working mother with such a large household of children.

Jean was born in Ranger during the Great Depression, but she doesn't remember feeling deprived. The family with four children lived in the country, and they could raise their own food, but she recalled sending canned food to relatives who lived in the city.

Her family's meat was mostly venison because their cows were sold to raise money for living expenses.

Jean remembers the hardships of World War II but feels the scarcity of ammunition was hardest for her family because they depended on wild game for their meat supply. One had to be accurate with every shot as bullets couldn't be wasted. She even did some of the hunting herself and has remained a sharp shooter, amazing her son and family recently at a shooting range.

After Jean graduated from high school in Utopia, she attended Draughton's Business College in San Antonio in 1949 and 1950. From college, she moved into a secretarial job in San Antonio. In 1950, she married Charles Smart, and three children were born to their union, and they continued to live in San Antonio.

One of the darkest hours of her life was when her husband was killed in an automobile accident. After awhile, the children found a neighbor whom they wanted for their father, and Jean and her children joined him when he moved to Cincinnati, where they were married in 1956. As so often happens in a second marriage, she said the children thought it was their wedding. This marriage produced four more children.

When the marriage ended seven years later, Jean, at 32, was left alone in a big city without family, so she moved back to San Antonio and then in 1965 to Lampasas where her parents lived. She purchased the house just south of Sulphur Creek and the town square where she still lives. As the bread winner in the family, she went to work as a cook at Bowden's café for seven years, then moved to the Country Kitchen when A.G. and Ila Fay Hodges were the owners.

In 1976, she married Earl Withers and acquired his seven children. She said it was fortunate they never had more than 10 kids home at the same time, because she doesn't know how she would have found room for them in the house.

Another tragedy occurred in Jean's life in 1982, when Earl died of a brain tumor. She said the hardest thing she ever had to do was to tell 14 children their father had died.

She closed Jean's Café in 1991 after Mr. Springer sold the property, but her sign re- mained until just recently in Benny Boyd's Used Car Lot.

She still needed income so she has devoted herself to the care of senior citizens -- some much younger than she -- working for Girling Health Care and for private patients, helping them to stay independent as long as they can. She said she gets joy and appreciation from her work and will work for whatever an employer can afford to pay.

Jean also said faith, hope and a sense of humor have helped her get through the difficulties of life.

As an example of her humor, when Jean first came to work for me she drove an old car whose rag top had deteriorated and some strips were beginning to curl. Instead of despairing about it, she told me she drove the only car in town with curly hair.

I am pleased to say she now drives a new red car. She chose red so people could see her coming and get out of the way.

Jean says running her own café for 20 years was one of her proudest accomplishments, next to raising 14 children. She is pleased they are all productive citizens and listed their professions: a social worker, a lay minister in Russia, sponsored by a church in Houston; a teacher; a tutor in a prison; construction workers; homemakers; truck drivers; a mechanic; and a prison warden.

She is pleased to report that she has a good relationship with all 14 of her children which was not always true, especially when they were teenagers and some thought they knew more than she did.

Recently, they gave her a surprise 78th birthday party at the Senior Citizens Center.

She nearly didn't turn up because she was too busy with her patients.

Bobbye Alexander Behlau was born in Lampasas and graduated from LHS in 1946. After living in San Antonio for 50 years where she was an elementary school principal, she and her husband, Joe, have retired in Lampasas.

Mrs. Behlau is a descendent of the Alexanders and Davises who settled here in the 1800s. She can be contacted at 556-4076 or at bbehlau@earth-comm.com.