Restaurant owner, flat-grill magician
Author:   MARA KLECKER
ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
Publication: Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Little Rock, AR)
Section: Arkansas
Date: July 12, 2015
Page: 16

Wardell "Poppy" Pennington tried to retire three times before finally putting down his spatula after more than 60 years of flipping sizzling burger patties at his Newport restaurants.
"There was nobody who could outwork him," Lindsay Briggs, 37, said of her late grandfather, who ran five restaurants in the community throughout the years.
Less than six weeks short of his 93rd birthday, Pennington died Friday at UAMS in Little Rock after tripping over a steel cart while volunteering at a food pantry in Newport.
Failing eyesight from macular degeneration forced Pennington out of the restaurant business about five years ago, said one of his twin sons, John Pennington. But he was never known to be idle, even in his 90s. So, he began volunteering two days a week at the food pantry.
"Even on his last day on earth, he was helping to feed people," John Pennington said. "After all, that's what he loved."
After flying 65 bombing missions during his three years in the Air Force during World War II, Pennington returned home in 1945 and bought a hot-tamale machine with his brother-in-law. A year later, he opened his first restaurant, Taylor's Corner.
"He was a salt-of-theearth kind of guy. He worked, went to war, came home and worked for the rest of his life - always cooking away," John Pennington said.
In an interview with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in 1996 - just before selling Money and Poppy's to enter one of his short-lived bursts of "retirement" - Wardell Pennington said he had fed "five generations of kids."
Though his restaurants - Money and Poppy's being the latest - served a variety of food over the years, his greasy hamburgers were "legendary," Briggs said. The 2 inches of quality ground beef and thick slices of Velveeta won him several awards for the best burgers in the state, she said.
Even when his pizzas - with a hand-tossed crust and special sauce - became popular, Wardell Pennington stayed true to the hamburgers. "I'm a hamburger man," he'd tell his son John.
"Yes, dad," his son would say. "But everyone is loving your pizza now."
"Well, they need to love hamburgers," Wardell Pennington would say, turning back to his sizzling patties.
That's always the way it was, John Pennington remembers. Even with his back turned to the door, Wardell Pennington knew what his customers needed, or at least what he thought they needed. He'd hear the voices of his regulars or hear the waitresses drop a name and get the order started immediately.
"It was always, 'I know who you are and what you want,'" John Pennington said.
In 1996, the elder Pennington told the Democrat-Gazette that most cooks fix things the way the customer wants. "Usually I fix it the way I want," he said.
The "magician on the flat grill" really did know what his customers loved, John Pennington said.
Briggs agreed. "The way he treated customers - that was just as good as his cheeseburgers," she said.
Some people who entered his restaurants didn't have money to buy meals.
"He'd insist they sit down and order whatever they wanted," John Pennington said. "That's the way he was – you couldn't take anything from him, but he'd give you anything."
He worked to give everything to his three grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren too, Briggs said. When Briggs was barely toddling, he'd give her a notepad and let her play waitress. She'd weave through the Saturday morning crowd and take orders, scribbling on the pad in thick, hard lines.
"I didn't even know how to write yet," she said. "But Poppy let everyone know that they were to play along for me."
Briggs' 2½-year-old daughter died last August. Though losing her grandfather has been difficult, she said there's a hidden blessing.
"[My daughter] knew him while she was alive. Poppy will be the first person she loved to go greet her and play with her in heaven."