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Obituary: Edward T. Owens / Long-time owner of popular restaurant in Hill District
Thursday, July 27, 2000 By L.A. Johnson, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
"Go on down there to Wylie and Kirkpatrick to Eddie's restaurant. Coffee cost a nickel and you can get two eggs, sausage and grits for 15 cents. He even give you a biscuit with it."
Eddie's Restaurant is still going strong at the corner of Wylie Avenue and Kirkpatrick Street in the Hill District, but today that meal, plus coffee, runs about $5. A mint green neon sign in the window glows "Home Cooked Meals."
Edward T. Owens, the man whose restaurant forever will be commemorated in Wilson's works, died Sunday from a heart attack. He was 59.
"He loved to cook and he loved the people," his wife, Gloria Owens said. "That was his life, that restaurant."
When Mr. Owens and his brother, Donald, opened the restaurant almost 36 years ago, their father was the cook.
"They made $90 the first day," said his nephew, Donald Owens, Jr., who was busy helping keep the family business going yesterday. "Uncle Eddie was a good cook and good with people."
Gloria Owens met Mr. Owens, a Schenley High School graduate, at the restaurant in 1964. She was a waitress.
"He gave me a job, which I needed because I was raising a son and things went on from there," she said. They married in 1973.
"What he liked to do was work -- 12 to 14 hours a day, seven days a week for 35 years," she said. "I couldn't drag him out of that restaurant with a chain. He loved it."
Eddie's Restaurant served generations of people. When patrons were having tough times, he'd let them eat for free or lend them a little cash. Whenever long-time customers were ill or in the hospital, he'd visit them with food and good cheer. Even on his busiest days, he'd find a little time to sit with people and chat.
"He didn't care if you were a minister, a judge, a drug addict or a prostitute," his sister, Valerie Johnson, said. "It was in his nature to treat everybody with the utmost respect."
"He was easygoing," said Eldridge "Poncho" Rivera, a cook at the restaurant who knew Mr. Owens more than 15 years. "Never tell him anything personal, though, because he would tell it to everybody."
Rivera credits Mr. Owens with pushing him to be a better person in work and in life, telling him that attitude is everything.
"Only a father or a mentor can do that for you, point you in the right direction," Rivera said. "He was there for me."
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Wilson, who grew up in the Hill District, spent many an hour in Eddie's and has immortalized the restaurant in a couple of his plays. Lee's Restaurant in Wilson's "Two Trains Running" is loosely based on Eddie's Restaurant.
"The restaurant in the play has the same floor plan as Eddie's," Johnson said. "They even borrowed Eddie's neon "Home Cooked Meals" lights for when they did it at the Public Theatre."
Decades ago, Wilson even worked at Eddie's Restaurant once -- for exactly one day.
"He took a break to write and sat in the booth to work on whatever he was writing," Johnson said. "My older sister caught him and reported him to Eddie, who said, `You're not here to write.' "
Although Wilson's food service career was short-lived, he continued to visit Eddie's Restaurant as a patron.
Eddie's Restaurant's heyday was in the '60s, when the restaurant was open all night, and his brother owned the bar next door aptly called, "My Brother's Place." Crowds would fill the street outside the restaurant trying to get in after all the clubs had closed.
Mr. Owens also was a deeply religious man who led others in his family to God through his example.
Johnson remembers her brothers, Eddie and Donald, as dynamic businessmen who were inseparable. They were a year apart in age and in death. Donald Owens died about a year ago, shortly after a family reunion. Coincidentally, there was a family reunion this past weekend, too, and the last time she saw Mr. Owens was Sunday morning.
"I can honestly say that Eddie was at his best," she said. "He had on his checkered cook pants, a new white shirt, and chef's hat. The restaurant was so busy, I got up to get my own coffee. He was busy running around and breaking in a new cook."
Other survivors include siblings Lillie Marshall of Los Angeles, Carole Williams and Janet Primus; a stepson, Kenneth Johnson; five grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
The funeral will be held at 11 a.m. today in the Christian Missionary Alliance Church, 2325 Webster Ave. Burial will be in Homewood Cemetery.
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