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It's A Miracle: Mary's Diner Reopens

Tribune photo by MICHAEL SPOONEYBARGER

A photo of Debbie Capron's mother, the restaurant's namesake, serves as a reminder of the hard work that went into opening - and reopening - the establishment.

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By MICHELLE BEARDEN | The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 19, 2008

TAMPA - She wasn't sure whether it was the devil doing his business or just plain bad luck.

But that bolt of lightning that tore through Mary's Miracle Restaurant on U.S. 92 just before dawn on a sultry summer morning sure did a number on the wooden building.

"They called it a total loss, maybe $150,000," says owner Debbie Capron, shaking her head at the horror of the memory. "Burned a big old hole in the ceiling, 12 foot around. They condemned it then and there."

That was June 16, 2000, and Capron was in a heap of trouble. She had let her insurance lapse months earlier. But she had some equity in the place and supporters who came out in droves. They sponsored a benefit. She pledged to re-open in months.

Things didn't go smoothly.

There were problems with the county, so many her head is still spinning. Stricter building codes and mandatory permits drained her bank account. Miscommunication with government officials caused delays. Bad piled on bad. She almost lost the place for nonpayment of taxes. A local businessman - "my guardian angel" - stepped in and saved it from the auction block on the final day.

The lights were out a long spell on the diner, a favorite among long-haul truckers and burley Harley bikers out here by the state fairgrounds.

But Capron, a 61-year-old woman of stubborn faith, never gave up. She peddled boiled peanuts, sold secondhand goods and tried to stretch the paycheck her husband earned installing floors. Sometimes, she picked up staples from a food bank and accepted charity.

Earlier this month, she got her Christmas miracle in the form of a Certificate of Occupancy letter from the county. It's taped to the wall, next to the handwritten menu board that changes daily, touting $5.99 specials like shepherd's pie and meatloaf. They come with two vegetables and your choice of biscuit or corn bread.

Todd Scime, who runs a government liaison business, made about 10 trips to the county building on Capron's behalf. He likes to exude confidence for his customers, but even he got discouraged as the months, then years, wore on. At one point, he secretly planted a cross in the back of the property, praying for some divine intervention.

"It was, by far, the longest and most frustrating job I've ever taken on," he says.

The diner, once housed in the old Peterson's Grocery Store, is in three single-unit modular buildings joined together. Tables and chairs, seating for 70, have replaced the worn vinyl booths. The sit-down counter is scratch-free, gleaming with newness.

Everything else is pretty much the same. Including the wall clock fashioned from a piece of polished cypress and shaped like a Christian cross. It cost Capron $10 at a swap meet years ago. She says it's a constant reminder of who's in charge.

Loyal customers such as Dave Bargo have been waiting for this day.

"It's like an old friend back in town," says the used-car dealer from Seffner as he settled his lunch bill. "Everybody knew it would open up again because we all know her. But no doubt about it, this was one long remodeling job."

The sign out front says, simply, "Restaurant."

Capron is low on funds - actually, she's $375,000 in debt - and can't afford an official new sign. She put out a "Grand Opening" banner that whips around on windy days to let folks know she's back in business.

Mary's Miracle Restaurant is east of the fairgrounds, next door to Iron Workers 397. Just beyond that is Angel's Show Bar. Capron calls it "that hoochie-coochie place," but she says it with affection, not judgment.

"Them girls have to eat," she declares. "Maybe they'll come in here and be led to the Lord. You just never know."

Her daddy, Thomas Bell Bryan, bought the old wooden grocery store back in 1967 and planned to convert it into a restaurant. He had cancer and wanted to leave a business for his wife, Mary, a resilient woman with a third-grade education. He always said that people gotta eat, and Mary sure could cook.

Even though it was his idea, Bryan wasn't sure he could pull off the venture. He was a farmer with a small fleet of trucks.

"It'll be a miracle if we ever get this place up and running," he said. Hence, the name.

On July 15, 1968, three months to the day after she buried her husband, his wife opened Mary's Miracle Restaurant. A faded yellow newspaper clipping from the Tribune shows a beaming 4-foot-11 Mary at the cash register, with the very first customer buying a cup of coffee. There was no sign of the fear gnawing inside her, a widow at age 52 working outside the home for the first time.

There was never any pretension at the restaurant, open seven days a week for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Waitresses bantered with the customers and called them "Hon." Everything was made from scratch. People came from miles away to eat Mary's famous chicken and dumplings and banana cream pie.

Her heart finally gave out in 1991. Mary was 75. The family vowed to keep her diner open.

The Bryans had 10 kids. "They used to say, every time Daddy hung his pants on the bedpost, Mama would get pregnant," Capron says. Several of the kids worked at the diner, but she knew she would eventually take it over. Her middle name was Bell, just like her daddy's.

She left for a spell, back in the early '80s, and opened Debbie's Frontier in West Point, Texas, between Houston and Austin. Business boomed with oil riggers. After the industry went bust, she closed shop and came back home where she belonged.

By then, Capron had rededicated her life to the Lord. She met him first at age 13, but drifted away. In 1981, she had another spiritual awakening, this time making a firm commitment. Still, she's the first to say, in a voice husky from her pack-a-day Pall Mall Filters habit, that she's no saint.

"Been married five times, twice to the first one," she admits upfront. The mother of two grown children, she's now wed to Dominick Capron, the man she calls her "soul mate" and her backbone. "God gave me a jewel when he gave me Dominick."

Mary's Miracle Restaurant is more than a business to Capron. She also considers it her ministry, a place where she gives spiritual consolation to those who seek it. If a customer is in need of a prayer, she stops everything to deliver. She gives jobs to people who need them most, even housing some of them in the six trailers she rents out behind the diner.

Judy McCormick, 61, has hard times etched on her face. She couldn't make ends meet on her government check and was "real down on my luck" when Capron gave her a place to stay and the offer to work in the kitchen when she feels up to it. The arrangement helps McCormick get over the blues that sometimes overwhelm her.

"Whenever I'm down and out, she grabs my hands and prays with me. It's a real blessing," McCormick says. "She has that way of lifting you up, when you need it the most."

Capron gives the credit where it's due. She's a member of General Assembly Pentecostal, which draws some 100 faithful to worship every week. Even in the leanest of times, she gave what tithe she could.

Fellow congregants including Vickie Wilson, the church's volunteer youth leader, want to see Capron succeed. But these aren't the best economic times to open a business, much less a restaurant. So Wilson works free, coming in the mornings to fry up sausage and make biscuits from scratch.

She stays through lunch, making homemade soups and what Debbie calls "the county's best coleslaw ever." Then she leaves for her paying job, working at a local pizzeria. She's happy to help her friend.

"Debbie has a giving nature," Wilson says. "She's been faithful to the Lord all along. And he's going to honor that, just wait and see."

One starry night in late fall about five years ago, with the restaurant's future in limbo and her bank account depleted, a depressed Capron sat on the porch of her doublewide trailer. She smoked her Pall Mall and contemplated whether the struggle to reopen was really worth the effort.

Then, in the distance, above the trees and high in the sky, the silence broke with the sound of sleigh bells, just like she heard as a child when she believed in Santa. She swears she heard God speaking to her.

"Debbie, you'll be getting your miracle. It will be your Christmas miracle. Don't give up."

That gave her faith a jump-start. And God didn't disappoint. She just didn't know he meant she would have to wait five Christmases.

"But I got my miracle on 34th Street," she says, laughing. "Only it's the miracle on U.S. 92. It's finally come."

Mary's Miracle Restaurant, 10203 E. U.S. 92, is open from 5:30 a.m to 9 p.m. Monday through Friday and 5:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. weekends; call (813) 621-9300. Keyword: Miracle Restaurant, to see a gallery of past and present photos and video story of the Tampa

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