This is a photo of a restaurant called the Indiana Barbeque. Mom, Phyllis Adair DeWitt-VanVleck, was a waitress at this restaurant.
Originally, she worked at the restaurant across the street, but tired of the way they cut meat off of meals that were half eaten and served it to another diner, and just unsanitary practices like that. The owner of Indiana Barbeque had offered her a job several times and she finally took him up on his offer.
One night, this gentleman came into the Indiana Barbeque on a search for mashed potatoes.
Harold G. VanVleck was not in the military yet, but he fell in love with that waitress. Not just the mashed potatoes that they happened to have that night because the owner wanted some for his dinner. The owner shared them with Harold and Harold lined up all the pennies in his pocket and when Phyllis picked up that plate, she found her tip in pennies, in a ring.
Now, that may not sound like much of a tip, but this was somewhere around 1939. Pennies were worth a whole lot more.
Phyllis is 90 now and lives alone, for the first time in her life. Harold passed away in 1998, at the age of 79.
And, they fell in love over a circle of pennies.
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