Harr’s will close at the end of April

Duke Ellington ate at Sol and Dotty Haar’s place.

So did Roy Rogers and Danny Thomas.

And Bob Devaney.

For decades the Haars catered to stars and everyday people, alike, serving up hefty portions of compassion along with the steaks and cinnamon rolls their restaurant became known for.

Now, after almost 60 years in the business, Dotty Haar is selling Harr’s Restaurant in Waterloo. Bob Hall, who owns the nearby el bees restaurant is buying the Harr’s building that lies along Old U.S. Highway 275 and plans to move his business there. He assumes ownership April 30.

As that date approaches, Haar looks forward to spending more time with her grandchildren, Hailey, who turns 6 this month, and 3-week-old Caden.

“I want to see them grow up,” she said.

But she also believes the restaurant business has changed.

“Today dining has more to do with fashion than food,” she wrote in a letter to the Fremont Tribune that appears on today’s Opinion page. “Our family simply refuses to compromise quality, service and value to keep up with the more fashionable chain restaurants.”

Haar was 15 years old when she started working in the restaurant business. She later met and married Sol Haar, the son of immigrant parents. He and Dotty’s first restaurant was the Shangri La in Dodge City, Kan., a railroad and rodeo town.

He was at a train stop in LaJunta, Colo., when he spotted Duke Ellington buying a newspaper. Dotty feared her husband had missed getting back on the train, but learned he’d spent the whole night talking to Ellington in the legendary musician’s personal car. At a time of racial segregation, many restaurants and hotels weren’t open to African Americans. But when Ellington and his band came to Dodge City to perform between picture shows, the Haars closed their restaurant, fed the group and made snacks for them.

“He was very nice person,” Dotty said of Ellington.

Other celebrities stopped at the Shangri La.

Roy Rogers became a regular. Joan Crawford, Veronica Lake and other stars whose names have slipped from Dotty’s memory ate there, too. Arthur Fiedler of the Boston Pops even made his own Caesar salad in the kitchen.

Back then, the Haars served New York strip steaks dinners for $3.25. Lobster tail dinners cost $2.75. Desserts and non-alcoholic beverages were included in the price of the meal.

In the 1950s, the Haars were visiting friends in Fremont, when they met businessman Art Gifford. Before they left, Gifford had talked Haar into moving to Nebraska.

Their first restaurant was on 23rd Street where Walgreen’s is now. Haar spelled the restaurant’s name with two “r’s,” because an Omaha business already had the name “Haar’s.”

Haar moved his business to Military Avenue, then relocated for the last time in Waterloo. The new spot offered a more central location between Fremont and Omaha. Almost all the food in the restaurant was — and still is — homemade.

It would become a popular place. The late Sen. J.J. Exon and the late Husker coach Bob Devaney ate there. So did Sen. Bob Kerrey.

But no one had to be a celebrity to be treated well.

“You could walk in and be holding a baby and talk to my dad and come in 10 years later and he would remember you and the name of your kid and what you did the last time you were there,” said the Haars’ son, Paul.

The younger Haar also remembers one steak-loving customer who’d lost an arm.

“My mother never wanted him to ask his wife or someone else to cut his steak for him,” Haar said.

So even amid the manic pace of a restaurant kitchen, she’d have the steak cubed after it was cooked, then put back together in the shape of a steak and wrapped in bacon to hold it together. The man just had to remove the bacon with his fork and eat the pieces.

But the Haars didn’t only attend to customers’ needs. They agonized over them, Paul said. Heated arguments erupted between staff and his parents over setting up for and serving wedding parties.

“My mother was the hardest person to work for on the planet, because she demanded so much,” Paul said.

Men weren’t allowed to wait tables.

“We didn’t have the attention to detail,” Paul said. “When she finally let my friend and I do that, she only did so after she knew we would do it right.

“Love is love and business is business. She used to believe that if your customers had to ask you for anything, you’d blown it.”

Sol Haar was tough-minded, too.

“People always said that if you worked for Sol Haar, you could work for anyone, because he was known to chew us out once in a while,” said Haar’s sister-in-law, Linda Foxworthy. “But we have help who’ve been with us since they were 13 or 14, and they’re still here.”

Foxworthy, the hostess, was 15 when she started working as a busgirl at the restaurant, when it was still on U.S. 30 in Fremont. It was her first job.

“The first night, I dropped a tray of 20 glasses, and broke 19,” she said.

Sol Haar came around the corner, hollering.

“He took one look at me, scared to death and bawling, and he just stopped dead. He said, ‘Honey, are you cut?’ I said, ‘No, sir. I’m so sorry Mr. Haar.’

“And he said, ‘It’s OK. You left one. Step out of the glass and we’ll clean it up.”

The Haars’ compassion wasn’t extended to only one employee. They bought prom dresses for busgirls who couldn’t afford them. Sol was known to co-sign car loans for kids, help employees find other jobs when they outgrew the restaurant and “go to bat for some kid that no one else had faith in,” Foxworthy said.

Customers benefited from the same types of generosity. The Haars often brought food to customers grieving the loss of a loved one.

“They were our friends … I can’t remember how many nights after work, we would make a pan of rolls, a ham and potatoes and would come to these people’s homes …I personally saw this 50 or more times and I know they’ve done it hundreds,” Paul said.

“We still do,” his mother added.

Sol Haar also supported many charities and helped raise funds for the Dodge County Humane Society.

He would be remembered for such acts of kindness after he died in August 1991 at age 78. He died in his sleep in Orlando, Fla., where he’d been visiting Paul, who was performing at Walt Disney World with the All-American College Band.

“When I came back for the funeral, I heard the first rumors that we were selling the restaurant,” Paul said.

Those rumors persisted for the next 16 years, but family members kept the business running.

Foxworthy had married Dotty’s brother, Oran, who had been the chef since he was 18. They stayed. Dotty’s sister, Mary, joined the group shortly after Sol’s death.

“We have staff what have been with us through three generations of their own family. If that isn’t a family restaurant, I don’t know what is,” Dotty said.

One longtime employee, Dorothy Howe, has worked at the restaurant since she was 13.

“All three of my children have worked here, and both of my grandkids,” she said.

Howe has many good memories — of times when she’d get behind on Saturday nights because she was too busy hugging customers.

“There’d be an elderly lady with her arms around your neck or a man telling you about his son who just bought a farm. You can’t not stop and talk to them,” she said.

Customers have been faithful, too, even sending Howe a flood of cards and letters when she got sick and couldn’t work for a while.

Lots of engagements have taken place at Haars. Foxworthy remembers the young man who had staffers put the diamond ring in his girlfriend’s water glass.

“I lived in fear that his intended would drink it before she ever noticed,” Foxworthy said.

But the proposal went off as planned.

Waitresses also enjoyed playing pranks on ornery customers. They put a plastic fly on one customer’s steak and glued down the place setting of another. That was payback for the times he’d call in a reservation for 40 and say the bus was in the parking lot, Foxworthy said.

“We’ve had some good memories,” Howe said.

Foxworthy agreed.

“We’ve had a lot of tears, but time moves on and we have to, too,” she said.

Today, Paul Haar is professor of saxophone and jazz studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He and his wife, Tara, and their children live in Lincoln. His mother lives in Fremont.

Haar doubts he’ll ever return to Waterloo, but has good memories of the restaurant and has learned much from his parents.

“I got a chance to see a work ethic,” he said. “What I demand from my students at the university is no different than what my parents expected from people who worked for them. You were to be prepared, professional and to do what you did to the best of your ability, all the time, with no excuses.”