Miss Lyndonville Diner will not reopen after sustaining damage as a result of Vermont’s early July flood. Janet Gray Burnor, who has owned the diner for 46 years, plans to sell the business.
“I’m choosing to rebuild but not reopen,” Burnor, 72, told Seven Days on Friday morning.
Still, the closure of the Northeast Kingdom staple “feels like a death in the community,” she said, getting choked up. “We are heartbroken. I completely understand the community’s reaction to this loss, and I have tremendous gratitude. They’ve never let us down.”
There were customers in the dining room as water from the Passumpsic River crossed the street, Burnor said. Manager Travis Butts, who has worked at the diner for 25 years, evacuated customers and staff, then got trapped while closing down equipment. “He made a sandwich and went up on the roof,” she said.
Both the kitchen and the dining room were damaged when they filled with at least a foot of water, Burnor said. She plans to repair the building before selling, unless a buyer comes along who wants to make it their own. Then she’ll retire.
“I’m going to be 73 in a few weeks,” Burnor said. “I didn’t plan to do it this way. But to me, it’s a logical response to what happened, and I’m totally OK with it.”
Burnor didn’t want to make a “knee-jerk reaction” immediately after the flood, she said. But after weighing her options and talking with daughters Kim Gaboriault and Heidi Sanborn, who run the dining room, “I decided that the best course of action right now in response to this flood is to just stop and rebuild it and put it up for sale.”
Burnor and her late husband, Ashley Gray, were leasing the building — originally a Sterling diner car — when a fire destroyed it in 1978.
“Now, for the first time, I see the owner of the building’s perspective,” Burnor said. “When that fire hit, [the previous owner] wanted to be done.”
She and Gray built a legacy in Lyndonville, attracting locals, tourists and politicians on the campaign trail for blue-plate specials at the diner’s long counter or burgers and fries at one of its booths. When Gray died of cancer in 2005, Burnor continued on. In late June, she told Seven Days that Miss Lyndonville’s longevity came from the strength of its relationships with the community and with longtime staff.
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“It’s good food, it’s good service — all the mechanical stuff,” Burnor said at the time. “But it’s that emotional realm that sets us apart from a lot of places.”
When the business sells, Burnor said, she’ll offer to run a training class for the new owner’s dining room staff, “to instill the difference between an ‘order taker’ and someone who cares about the people they’re dealing with,” she explained.
She hopes the diner will continue in the same vein — and with a similar menu. After all, some of the dishes have been around for 46 years.
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