I think the greatest of all human virtues is loyalty. It embraces all the best of the human character: courage, faith, love and charity. -Douglas Bader

The title is a bit unusual this week, because the Weblog is a bit unusual. It is collection of a few small stories featuring a former co-worker and my late best friend, a guy named Bob Kalafut. He was a Miami Dolphins fan just to irritate me. He was originally from Detroit and had a November birthday which is the reason I remember him at this time each year.

In an earlier life he was a mascot for the Detroit Pistons and a harness racer. Not from my typical friend circle.

We connected and stayed connected over the years and over the miles: for 29 years of our 32-year friendship, we lived in different states, never closer than 1,000 miles apart. Yet our friendship, and his loyalty to me and my family, and my loyalty to him is worth writing about.

What is a Toddle House Restaurant?

Toddle House restaurants were started in 1931. ''They were movable,'' the person who moved me to Memphis in 1985 and company President Ron Artzer said in an interview with the Chicago Tribune right after I joined the company.

''If business wasn`t good at one corner, you could move the whole restaurant. Folklore has it that a little boy saw one of the restaurants being moved and said to his mother, `Look at that toddling house.` Who knows if it`s true? That`s what the legend says.''

For more than 30 years, Toddle Houses had a counter, 12 stools, a grill and a cook/waitress. They were open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The peak year for Toddle Houses was 1966, when there were 300 in existence.

Shortly after that, a new parent company decided that the name and the concept were outmoded. Toddle Houses were killed and replaced by restaurants called Steak & Egg Kitchens.

In the early 1980's, another new parent company decided to bring Toddle Houses back, with concessions to economic realities. The new prototype added booths and increased seating capacity to 64, because it`s hard to turn a profit on a restaurant that seats only 12 people at a counter.

I had previously worked for Ron Artzer in California, and as part of the revitalization efforts, he hired me as VP/Director of Operations to run the company stores.

The plan was to scale up to 300 stores, mainly through franchising, although at the time we operated only ‘company-owned’ stores. 

I was based in Memphis and was responsible for about 30 restaurants scattered in the Washington, DC area, Tampa, New Orleans, and Houston, Texas. 

As you can imagine, I did a lot of traveling. In fact, one year I earned 17 free tickets on Republic Airlines, although I gave most of them away because I didn’t really want to travel for leisure, considering my job. 

Some weeks I was in one city, some weeks in three cities. It was especially challenging in the winter months. I might be going from Memphis to Tampa to DC, and needing an overcoat up north, but short sleeves in Florida on the same trip.

Who is Uncle Bob?

In the early years of my son’s life, a former employee, Bob Kalafut, turned into my best friend. We called him ‘Uncle Bob,’ even though he was not related in any way. 

He was just a solid guy, loyal, driven, and always enthusiastic. I know that because when you asked him how he was, he would say ‘enthusiastic.’  Everyone who knew him, knew he was the most enthusiastic person in their circle. There was no one close.

One particular memory of Bob involved my father. My dad came to visit us in Southern California in the late 1980's a short time before he passed away.

We had just moved to Marina del Rey, and I was working in Santa Monica in the pizza business. Our apartment was actually in the only complex in the LA area that didn’t have graffiti on the walls or buildings: an important factor since my wife and son were alone at home all day.

After a day or two of hanging around the marina, dad and I took a short flight to San Francisco, where we met Bob, who was still working in the Bay Area, and hopped on another flight and headed to Lake Tahoe/Reno area, where I used to have restaurants, so I knew the area well. My dad loved to gamble, and in those days in Dorchester, there were plenty of bookies to take your money, but he’d never been to Nevada, so it was a big deal for him.

At the time, I believed Lake Tahoe was the most beautiful place I had ever been, and there was a part of the lake, Emerald Bay, that was the best of the best, and I was very eager to show my dad.

We checked into our rooms at the MGM Grand in Reno, about 30 minutes from the lake. We had dinner and I went to bed, but my dad and Bob both decided to stay up and gamble for a while. 

When I woke up groggy at 4 am, and my dad’s bed was empty, I panicked. I figured he and Bob went out on the town. I knew my dad’s health wasn’t that good, so I was very concerned. I called Bob’s room, this is before cell phones, and when he answered I knew that my dad had gone rogue. My father was simply missing, and neither Bob nor I knew where he was.

The two-person search party met in the lobby and scoured the hotel casino floor for him. He was nowhere to be found. We recombed the giant casino and all the nooks and crannies around the edges. We found a room labeled ‘private,’ opened the door and walked in. There was my dad, at a card table. he'd been playing poker all night, sitting at the table with a beer on his right side and a coffee on his left. I think he had a great time.

We got him to bed for a couple of hours, but then it was time to visit Lake Tahoe and head back to LA. Bob drove and my dad, naturally, slept in the back seat. When we got to Emerald Bay, ostensibly the reason we had taken the trip, we pulled over and his thoroughly pissed off son said ‘Dad, wake up, we’re at Lake Tahoe’s Emerald Bay.’ He sat up, looked out the window, said ‘Very nice,’ and laid down again and went back to sleep.

For many years, Bob made the greater effort to stay in touch, and we connected on a regular basis when I relocated to Memphis for the Toddle House role, and then to Cincinnati. Over time, he turned into my best friend and was a favorite of my entire family.

Loyalty Exchanged

Bob had an eccentric side, but consistently performed above expectations when we worked together in California. He was also very kind and generous to our new baby who had challenges that were hard to quantify.

In his work for me in the San Francisco and Sacramento areas over the course of a couple of years, he was an exceptional performer. One of his locations was the first store that I ate off the floor, it was so clean. (That story is here),

After the first new Toddle House franchises were sold in the Orlando area, I reached out to Bob to run the franchise side of the business and help owners open restaurants. I relocated him from San Jose to South Florida.

I also hired another former employee, Larry, to run the company stores, and moved him to Memphis. I’d had enough free tickets and lost luggage and had bigger plans.

After a couple of years, the executive team at Toddle House, including me, decided to make a bid to buy the company when Carson, Pirie, Scott, the current owners, tired of the restaurant business and put Toddle Houses up for sale.

Unfortunately, our former CFO, who did not like me at all, led another group competing against us to buy the company. I was excited about the bid I was sure we’d win, and the plan was that I would become the President of the new company when the deal closed.

One Monday night, my boss flew to Chicago to make a modified offer for Toddle House at a planned meeting on Tuesday. On that same Tuesday morning, an executive from Chicago came into our headquarters building and escorted me out. 

The other bidder had won, and there were orders to remove me and whoever was my secretary from the building. Locks were changed. Kind of hostile wouldn’t you say? So much for the President thing.

On Wednesday, when my boss came back to Memphis, we brought a Catholic priest with us when we went to clean out our offices of personal items. The experience kind of redefined ‘hostile takeover’ for me.

About two weeks later, I got a call from Bob. He’d been terminated. 

The new owners had called him into the office and asked him to denounce me and blame any issues the company might have on my leadership. 

Bob refused and was fired. 

I’m not sure how it went down exactly, but that same week, Larry, the other executive I had brought in was promoted to Vice-President. 

I wonder what his answer was? Probably wasn’t the same as Bob’s.

Bob had been loyal to me in a way that no one else ever had, and it cost him his job. He lost it because he wouldn’t bad mouth me. 

Who has ever had that kind of friend?

I got on the phone immediately and reached out to a recruiter I knew and connected him with Bob, and one thing led to another and a short two weeks later, before his severance ran out, Bob was working for a relatively new company with only five locations. You may have heard of them? Blockbuster Video.

Larry, the new VP at Toddle House, called me about a month later, when he’d been fired, looking for the same kind help. You can guess what I did or didn't do for him.

Bob rode the crest of Blockbuster’s growth and went on to have a very successful career with them. After they went away, he continued his career going into business with former franchisees he met during his tenure there. 

Wayne Huizinga, who started Blockbuster, also owned the Miami Dolphins at the time and Bob and I enjoyed a Patriot’s game in Wayne’s suite one year, one of many Patriots’ games we saw in South Florida over the years.

Bob and his partner hosted our family at their home near Fort Lauderdale many times over the years, and my son Joe enjoyed getting the promotional videos that a video store executive always had available.

Although our relationship was primarily long distance, and primarily telephonic, it was no less real. We talked weekly about this or that for almost 25 years, but after more than 30 years as my friend, Bob succumbed to pancreatic cancer n 2017 after a good fight.

Looking back, he made more of an effort to keep our friendship alive and current than me. To be honest, I think he liked my wife more than me, and of course, he liked my son the most. Perhaps it was the way he defined loyalty. There is no question, I changed his life, as short as it was. But he changed my perspective as well. We exchanged loyalty to the end.

Like anyone who passes too soon or unexpectedly, there are things I wished I'd said to him and things I wished we had talked about while he was still alive.

There is a Willie Nelson song called 'You Were Always on My Mind' that I heard for the first time when traveling with Bob in the Sierras and every time I hear the song, I remember, and can picture us, on a winding mountain road, talking business and life. I hope that this story, somehow, gets to him, and he knows that he is still on my mind.