Great American Roadsice Cafés West Richland, WA

WEST RICHLAND, WA When I entered the J D Diner it was shortly after the lunch hour had ended and with the exception of a couple sitting in a corner it was empty. I assumed I had chosen the wrong day and time to do an interview and would have to return another day. In fact, it turned out to be a stroke of luck

Soo Bae, 41, the manager, was friendly and explained to me in her sometimes halting English how she had immigrated to Tacoma just five years before from Korea.
Soo Bae, Mgr.
Her background was in studying Business and Accounting in college, which she never finished, but she ended up working in the restaurant trade and then moving to the Eastern side of Washington State.
She\'s found food is one way to understand a culture. But growing up she never imagined she\'d one day live in America or imagine she\'d end up in the restaurant business. She finds the biggest difference between Korea and America are the work habits. \"I think Koreans are more serious about their work,\" she says politely. At first she didn\'t like American food but now that\'s a part of the past.
At the J D Diner a big part of her customers are seniors. She ranks the Pot Roast Dinner at $7.95 and the Chicken Fried Steak at $5.50 as two of the best bargains on the menu. She is quick to add they make their daily soups all from home made recipes. The J D Dinner has a seating capacity of 129 with a banquet room.

The chef at the J D Diner is Trevor Ruddell, 37, a homegrown man from the city of Richland who has worked in restaurants since he was a student in high school.

Waiting in the corner unknown to me was a man with a World War II story that could be one lifted out of a Hollywood script.
Lloyd White, 86, came to West Richland in December, 1945 after his separation from the U.S. Army where he served in the European theater as an infantryman. He arrived in France in September, 1944 and was in combat with the 180th Infantry Division until December 3, 1944 when he was captured by the Germans and sent to a POW camp. When the war ended he was in a camp in Czechoslovakia, he thinks near a town that sounded like Ceska Leipa. (Author\'s note: I\'ve lived in the Czech Republic for much of the last 20 years and did not know there were any American POW\'s in the country and Mr. White is the first one that I\'ve met.)

White lost 48 pounds in the next five months on his slight frame, but was quick to point out it wasn\'t because his guards were hoarding rations, \"They didn\'t have much food to eat either,\" he explained.
At the war\'s end he made his way to Prague and caught a train to Plzen, with the help of a kind lady who he remembers telling him in near perfect English, she had worked in the Czech Embassy in Washington before the war. Plzen which by then was occupied by elements of General Patton\'s 3rd Army sent him and other released POWs to Regensburg in Germany where he was flown to La Harve. There at a place called Camp Lucky Strike he rubbed elbows with the famed Gen. Dwight Eisenhower in a mess hall line. \"He was only 10 feet away,\" White still marvels and he looked just like he did in his photos, smiling and pleasant.\" From La Harve he shipped out on the USNS Buckner to Newport News, Virginia. (Authors note: In 1965 I shipped home from the Army on the USNS Buckner.)
White who has a plucky way of speaking which has a Trumanesque quality to it, when I mentioned I lived in Plzen confessed one of his haunting memories of the war was when he saw six German SS Officers being lynched in the Plzen\'s main square. After the hanging, he added, some in the crowd were not satisfied and mutilated the bodies.
He came to Richland because of Hanford. His father went to work building the famous B reactor for Dupont and White followed in December, 1945 because of his father.
White\'s story as unusual as it might seem to those unfamiliar with the Hanford Atomic Project that helped build the atomic bombs for the Manhattan Project is almost commonplace. From 1943 onward Hanford was a magnet for workers coast to coast looking for employment. White left for nine years to return to his home town of Hamilton, Montana, then returned in 1961 and has never left.
With instant recall he can rattle off names of men he served with in the war and the name of the man who hired him to work for Morrison-Knutson for $1 an hour. When asked what he would do if tomorrow morning he was President of the U.S. there was no hesitation, \"I\'d recreate the CCC to put Americans back to work building this country up again, like it ought to be.\"
When asked his opinion of the #1 problem facing America, again he didn\'t hesitate. \"I think we\'ve got too many illegal aliens.\"
Blunt and honest, White clearly has the stamp of one of the generation who not only fought and won the greatest war of the 20th century but then came home and built some more of the American legend. (915)

Roger Burke is a novelist Among his books are the widely praised Just Another Roadside Café (2010). His newest novel, Wilson´s Exile, Will be released in 2011.