Niam's Parkette - memories remain vivid

The recent word that Wally Waffle  was moving from its Locust Street  home to a  spot in Highland Square would hardly have deserved more than a passing glance in the ways of Akron eateries.  Restaurants seem to open and close somewhere every day.  But even as routine as it sounds, Wally Waffle's departure will mark the epilogue of the story at the old place that, for some of us, at least, was a hometown landmark  that began more than a half-century ago as Niam's Parkette.

The place, as nurtured by Ed and Gerrie Niam,  was a breakfast -and-light-lunch haven that opened at dawn, a shrine to Notre Dame, a hangout for some of the town's most colorful characters with improbable stories,  bookies, cops, business types, Amishmen, lawyers, and if I'm not mistaken, urologists,  dentists and a guy who made all of the orange barrels that we are forced to navigate on Ohio's highways. Other than arriving in Eddie's presence at the same time with the same sworn-to truths  every day, the Parkette denizens were not a homogenous group of human beings.

It was a place that would have qualified for one of  A. J. Liebling's loving essays on  the assembly of New Yorkers who could be encountered at any number of out-of-the-way storefronts in the 1930s.  Casual, often with matters in dispute, it was a retreat safely out of the way  of buttoned-down social niceties,  a place where you could talk to somebody by raising your voice from several booths away.

But over the years, the little restaurant was turned over to a series of managers and Ed and Gerrie passed on.  A few years ago, the long-time owner of the building, Paul Salem,  Gerrie's brother, sold it outright to Akron Children's Hospital , which wanted it  for its expansion plans.

It's  said that nothing lasts forever -- unless you were part of the thinning  Parkette gang.   It's not only the stories we could tell about the place.  It's the stories we still want to tell.



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The Niam era: Great while it lasted!

THE PASSING OF Gerrie Niam at 85 evokes happier memories of a tiny restaurant on Locust Street that was long the pulsating roundtable for Akron's lively sports crowd . It was a unique eatery that lured Runyonesque characters to debate the eternal truths of winning and losing athletic teams. Niam's Parkette (the modest name suggests it was not on the Mobil Travel

Guide's 5-star list) served as the bully pulpit, earthy gridiron textbook and proud recruiting site for the late Eddie Niam, hometown football scout and Gerrie's combative but usually lovable husband.

But as Eddie held forth on his incisive wisdom on Las Vegas point spreads, an area high school halfback's chances of donning a Notre Dame uniform, or angry doubts about an official's game-changing decision in a game played eons ago, it was Gerrie who nobly tried to maintain a near-normal restaurant business from a cramped grille behind the counter.

Her days were tortuously long - down to the restaurant by 5 a.m. to prepare for the breakfast patrons, on her feet for endless hours, managing the menu for the next day, and carefully trying to make her offerings - from hot dishes to hamburgers and salads - tasteful for all. Much of the time, she was forced to ignore Eddie's booth-hopping to diagram the plays that Notre Dame drew up to defeat a powerful rival the past week end.

Notre Dame? For Eddie, it was the natural progression of loyalty to his former high school buddy, Ara Parseghian, from Northwestern coach to the Fighting Irish, which, from birth, neither Ara nor Eddie ever were. No matter. The clientele soaked up the lore seated underneath Notre Dame game balls and posters and other reminders of Eddie's solid dedication to a campus that he had never attended as a student. The audience included cops, dentists, businessmen, jocks, urologists, journalists and even some Amish folks who did their best to ignore the special ambiance of the place.

In Gerrie's life, not enough attention was accorded her as the sturdy enabler of Eddie's treasured role in the restaurant. She accepted it as her unyielding duty to keep the doors open and the grille hot. And I had the feeling that she proudly found reasons to suffer it as business as usual. She did not take vacations and only once did she join Eddie on a a trip to a post-season bowl in Texas, where he, a collector of everything, brought back a huge sombrero and respectfully tacked it on the wall of their home amid the clutter of his other memorabilia.

She even resorted to some pained humor in their existence. "Funny," she once told me, "that Eddie can remember the score of a particular football game, but can't remember my birthday."

No matter, Gerrie. This piece is how I fondly remember an Akron institution that belongs in any historical account of noteworthy Akron families that offered the old rubber town a unique dimension. Now rest in peace.