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Slice of Life

By staff March 1, 2004

"I just love to bake pies," confides Amanda Yoder, whose face is barely marked by her 75 years. Those pies-and hearty, home-cooked dinners-are why legions of locals and visitors lined the sidewalks outside the Amish restaurant Amanda and her husband Levi opened in 1975 on Main Street after they moved here from Indiana. They opened a second Yoder's at Bahia Vista in 1982, but in 1986, they closed the original restaurant because Levi had developed Parkinson's. Still, they continued to work 14-hour days, six days a week for years to come. "It took four hours before we opened just to bake the pies," Amanda recalls. Levi died in 1997 and Amanda retired in 1998. "But my heart's still here," she says. Today, one daughter, Anna, supervises the kitchen, and another, Mary Lou, handles personnel. Grandsons Christopher and Bryan cook and manage; eventually, Yoder's will pass to them. "They had playpens in the kitchen," says Mary Lou. "There would be an outcry if we sold it outside the family."

 

 

 

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