It may not be a stretch to say that Nancy Westenhaver was born to own a diner. In elementary school, rather than play house with her friends, she would play coffee shop.

“We would set up tables, chairs and drinks,” Westenhaver told me. “I’ve always wanted a coffee shop. I got my dream.”

After a career waiting tables and teaching others to wait tables, Westenhaver and her late husband opened Nancy’s Cafe in Rancho Cucamonga in 1994. The couple divorced in 2008 and the restaurant closed briefly before Westenhaver relaunched it in 2009 under the name Nancy May’s ’50s Cafe.

Larry Martin of Rancho Cucamonga, Calif. sits a spell as Ashley Pardington keeps his coffee filled at his local Nancy May’s ’50s Cafe on Wednesday, April 18, 2019. The Rancho Cucamonga, Calif. coffee shop celebrates its 25th anniversary Saturday, April 20, 2019. (Photo by Cindy Yamanaka, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)

The walls of Nancy May’s ’50s Cafe in Rancho Cucamonga are filled with objects, many donated by customers. (Photo by Cindy Yamanaka, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)

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Nancy May’s ’50s Cafe owner Nancy Westenhaver first decorated her diner with pigs from home then customers would give them to her at the Rancho Cucamonga, Calif. coffee shop. Photographed on Wednesday, April 18, 2019. (Photo by Cindy Yamanaka, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)

Ashley Pardington takes a second from serving to stop and smell the roses from a regular at Nancy May’s ’50s Cafe on Wednesday, April 18, 2019. The Rancho Cucamonga, Calif. coffee shop celebrates its 25th anniversary Saturday, April 20, 2019. (Photo by Cindy Yamanaka, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)

The exterior of Nancy May’s ’50s Cafe in Rancho Cucamonga’s Arrow Plaza. (Photo by Cindy Yamanaka, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)



From Nancy’s Cafe to Nancy May’s ’50s Cafe, Nancy Westenhaver was its namesake owner when it opened in 1994 and reopened in 2009, respectively. It’s all Nancy at the Rancho Cucamonga, Calif. coffee shop Wednesday, April 18, 2019. (Photo by Cindy Yamanaka, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)

Both times, the restaurant opened on April 20. This means Saturday will be a double anniversary.

“We’ve been reopened now 10 years since April 20, 2009. And that was 15 years to the day of the original opening on April 20, 1994,” the red-haired Westenhaver told me Wednesday as we chatted in a booth in her homey restaurant.

So is it the 10th anniversary, the 25th anniversary or both?

“We’re putting ’25’ on the cake,” Westenhaver said, “because it’s been 25 years that I’ve been here.”

As they should. It’s always been her name on the business, and as far as the menu, ambiance, location and staff are concerned, the business hasn’t changed much since its start.

Nancy’s, as I will always call it despite its altered name, is a Rancho Cucamonga favorite. A breakfast and lunch spot dressed in teal and pink, Nancy’s is notable for biscuits and gravy, chicken fried steak, fudge cake and 1950s music.

Also, for the hundreds of pig figurines and other ephemera like album jackets, car photos, police patches and posters, many donated by customers, that serve as decor.

More crucial is the staff, which has had remarkably little turnover. Three of the four servers — Paula Harmer, Cindy Mendlovitz and Shelly Bourassa — have been there most of the restaurant’s life. Busboy Joe Calvo was there from the beginning.

Each time you go in, you’ll see familiar faces and hear familiar voices, a balm in a confusing world.

“People can have a cup of coffee at home, or a bowl of oatmeal,” Westenhaver observed. “They come out to be around other people.”

The familiar faces include fellow customers. Some eat there daily or even twice daily, breakfast and lunch both.

Michael Marquardt, a retired engineer, finds his visits therapeutic.

He ate at Nancy’s with his late wife. When she died in 2014, he began coming in daily, taking a seat at a small table.

Westenhaver, who has an eye for these things, urged him to sit at the small counter with the older guys she calls the Liars Club. At first he only listened to their stories. Then he began talking.

“It brought me out of my gloom,” Marquardt, 72, told me from his seat at the counter. “I call it my social hour. The food is good, the ladies are great and it’s good for my mental health.”

He’s there at 9 a.m. for breakfast. “If I come in at 9:15, they say, ‘You’re late,’” he said with a smile. “When I go away on a family visit, I tell them the dates I’ll be gone and when I’ll be back. They say, ‘OK, we won’t worry about you until after that date.’”

If a regular is ill or dies, “their families will come in and tell us,” Westenhaver said. That happened with a recent death, where the customer’s mother and sister each came in to inform employees and thank them for their kindness.

“It’s like we’re a church,” Westenhaver said, both amazed and amused at her confessor status. “It’s my congregation.”

She finished high school early so she could get out in the world and earn a living, which she did as a waitress for Bob’s Big Boy in Alhambra. Bob’s promoted her to help open new locations and train new hires around the country and Canada. “I had a company car at 23,” she said.

She went on to have a similar role at Alphy’s, the coffee shops owned by Alpha-Beta supermarkets. For a while she was out of the business, raising three sons, and she spent a year with a title company, even considering going into real estate.

But restaurant work is what she loved, not being in an office. After waitressing again at Village Grille in Claremont, she and husband Frank Clark opened Nancy’s Cafe in a space that had just become available at Arrow Highway and Archibald Avenue.

Anxiety surrounded the launch. “The first time I charged a meat order on my credit card,” she recalled, “I went home and cried.” She thought they’d never be able to pay for it.

“We put this together in two weeks and crossed our fingers,” Westenhaver said of the restaurant. “When we opened, there was a wait in line.”

The original Nancy’s closed in March 2009 after Clark took it over and ran it into the ground. Westenhaver got the lease back.

Loyal customers who were handy painted the walls, fixed the molding, pulled up the carpet, stripped the glue, repaired the booths and more. Despite the recession, customers returned.

“When I reopened, there was a wait in line,” Westenhaver said. “That gets a little emotional.”

I’d eaten at Nancy’s now and then in the old days, when Clark enjoyed pulling customers’ plates away mid-meal, as if he thought they were done, and then returning the plate with a wink.

I interviewed Westenhaver and customers about the volunteer effort to reopen the restaurant. After that I became a regular, less for the food, which is basic fare, than for the floor show.

The four servers, including newcomer Ashley Pardington, are a crackup. Their interactions with customers are sometimes touching, sometimes sassy, sometimes over the customers’ heads.

“I can tell when you’re listening,” Harmer told me, “because you’re holding up a book and pretending to read but snickering.”

That doesn’t sound like me at all.

Westenhaver, 67, now works weekends only while popping in on other days. After two hip replacements, which she attributes to years on her feet carrying plates, she no longer waits tables. But she talks to customers and cashes them out at the register.

“I get to intermingle with all the people,” Westenhaver told me. “There’s no place I’d rather be. I always wanted to have my own restaurant. But I never pictured it being this much fun, or this satisfying.”

Cheers on 25 years and many more to come.

David Allen writes Friday, Sunday and Wednesday, snicker. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, visit insidesocal.com/davidallen, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on Twitter.