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Requiem for Rosie’s

Category: Tribute

Published on Thursday, 10 May 2012 00:20

Written by Randy Garbin

The legacy of Rosie’s Diner teaches many lessons, both in and out of the grand world of diner operation. What happens next should not make anyone hopeful.

After we returned from our first trip to Diner Land, we produced this Issue 19 of Roadside Magazine The last time I had the pleasure of visiting with Jerry Berta, I found a man worn down like a president after two terms in office. On my previous visit in 2000, he still wore his trademark white horned rim glasses, and he still had energy and ebullience I saw when I first shook his hand in a Boston art gallery in 1990. By 2002, I almost didn’t recognize the guy. The man who brought Rosie’s Diner to Michigan had had enough. He wanted to go back to making art, not food.

Roadside issue #19, published after our 1995 trip out to Diner Land (or World) at its peak. I could almost bank on Jerry’s unbridled enthusiasm for all that he did, and his ability to render golden everything he touched. As the legend now goes, Jerry started out as an artist, sculpting clay into whimsical but recognizable icons of roadside Americana. During his youth in Flint, Michigan, he frequented Uncle Bob’s Diner, which became his in 1987. Jerry bought the diner to truck across the state to his eleven acres on 14 Mile Road in Rockford, setting it up as the Diner Store, his workshop and studio. At that time, the desolate location north of Grand Rapids was little more than a remote feeder to exit 101 on the US Route 131 expressway.

So many people stopped by the diner looking for something to eat, he figured it made sense to set up another diner to serve actual food. Jerry mounted a large neon sign that said “Diner Store,” but people only saw the word “Diner.” Why else would someone put a diner there if not to serve meals?

Jerry had a long string of successes in his career starting from the day he came home from his first art fair with over $2500 in cash, a sum that promptly silenced any further criticism from his previously disapproving father. How hard could this be?