50 years (and retirement!) can't keep Beach cook out of kitchen

VIRGINIA BEACH

It's 5:11 p.m. on a Friday. A waitress wedges a single yellow ticket into the slot above the kitchen counter at Charlie's Seafood Restaurant.

Despite a summer storm that just soaked the Shore Drive section of Virginia Beach, it's still hot in here. Big metal fans heave the air around, and a breath of a breeze finds its way through a narrow window next to the stove.

Ninety-year-old Ommie Daniels, who is beginning her second shift of the day, adjusts her glasses and curves into the counter to read the fluttering ticket.

Shrimp and crabmeat casserole to go.

Ommie makes her way toward the refrigerator case in the next room, lightly placing a hand on kitchen surfaces as if making her way across a boat deck - on the doorjamb, on the stainless steel table where she sits reading or sleeping between orders, and then on the glass door of the fridge.

She scoops handfuls of fresh shrimp and crab from containers in the cooler, nestles them into a white ceramic dish, and heads back into the kitchen. At the stove, she adds some seasoning and slides the dish into the broiler, which belches a blast of heat into her face. She takes no offense.

Ommie, who has been cooking in this kitchen for more than 50 years, prefers to see several yellow tickets above the counter. That way, before she knows it, the clock will say 9:30 p.m. and her 10-1/2 -hour double-shift will end and she can drive herself home, thank the Lord for another day and go to bed.

Not that she's tired.

"I feel great," she says, her voice barely audible over the fans. "I like it busy."

But now there's a lull, so she settles into a chair at the stainless steel table within view of the kitchen counter.

For an industry in which nearly half of the cooks and food prep people are younger than 24 and help comes and goes like a series of summer squalls, Ommie is an icon.

A native of Hertford, N.C., Ommie (pronounced OH-mee ) was one of 11 children. Her first job was picking cotton. She came to Virginia Beach in 1934, married, joined Morningstar Baptist Church, and started working at Charlie's in 1956, just 10 years after Charlie and Mary Ellen Rehpelz - known as Mr. and Mrs. Charlie - opened what is now the oldest restaurant on Shore Drive.

Ommie started filling in for a girl and just kept on working. "Mrs. Charlie was so nice; she's what really kept us here," she says.

For 40 years, Ommie's kitchen colleague has been Betty Hill, who is now 71. Jeanie Hines, who passed away about a year ago, was the matriarch of the kitchen. Betty's mother, Edith, also worked in Charlie's kitchen for decades, well before black people were welcome in the front of the house.

"We were all used to it," Betty says. And when the dining room became integrated and one waitress balked at serving black customers, "Mrs. Charlie told her she had to do it," Betty says.

Not much more than that has changed. The kitchen is about the same, the sauté pans and pots seasoned with years of use. In the dining room, the floor is covered by the same cream-and-red checkered tiles and the original tables and chairs.

Betty's mother has retired; Ommie once retired, too.

"About 20 years ago, we had a big retirement party over at the Aberdeen Barn with a cake and gifts and all of that," says Paul Rehpelz, laughing. He's part of the third generation of Rehpelzes now running the restaurant.

A few weeks after the party, when Paul called Ommie asking whether she'd fill in for a shift or two, she just kept working. At first it was three days, then four, and now it's five days a week, with a double on Fridays. She takes two weeks of vacation during the winter holidays when the restaurant is closed.

And the thing is, she never seems tired. "She's amazing," Betty says. "I've never once heard her complain about anything."

On days off, Ommie, who is widowed, is involved in activities at her church and sometimes visits the sick. She's only missed Sunday school twice in all her years living in Virginia Beach, both times because she was working.

"If I'm not here, I'm there," she says. "I love the church, and I love the Lord. That's what keeps me going."

It's 5:45 p.m. Ommie is on her feet examining a row of tickets.

The restaurant's signature she-crab soup, which Ommie made during the lunch shift, simmers behind her on the stove in a pot so seasoned that its sides have the color gradations of a sunset. Yams she prepped that afternoon warm in a pan above the burners. A heap of golf ball-size hush puppies, considered by customers to be Ommie's specialty along with the award-winning crab soup, have been fried mahogany brown and are ready to go. She has mixed up the crab cakes and seasoned the slaw, not once consulting a recipe.

Everything is ready for the rush.

An order for soup comes in. Then a hamburger with fries. A shrimp basket with hush puppies. A broiled seafood platter with collards and a baked potato.

Ommie heads to the refrigerator to build the seafood platter. Other cooks join the dance, dropping baskets of fries into bubbling oil and minding burgers sizzling on the grill.

The pace quickens. At 6:15, an order so large that the waitress has written it on the back of a paper place mat comes in.

"Remember the other night when the table came in for six crabmeat au gratins?" the waitress asks Ommie. "This is the same man. He's your biggest fan."

Charlie's has a loyal clientele; many are second- and third-generation regulars. Diners often ask for Ommie, even send her tips. If it's not too busy, sometimes she'll go out into the dining room to chat.

The au gratin order has come from a table of members of the Board of Trustees for Edgar Cayce's Association for Research and Enlightenment Inc. Board member Doug Torrance of Columbus, Ohio, has been eating at Charlie's since 1966.

"We try to come in when Ommie is here," Torrance says. "We think she is a phenomenal cook."

Back in the kitchen, Ommie winces a little at the large au gratin order. It's one of the restaurant's more time-intensive dishes.

More orders are coming in. Shrimp salad. A toasted cheese sandwich. Crab cake dinners. Broiled scallops.

Ommie turns up the flame under the soup pot and glances at the diminishing hush puppy pile.

The clatter of plates from the dishwasher gets louder.

She works wordlessly, sensing that the dining room is nearly full.

She is once again considering retirement, perhaps in November, when she turns 91.

But for now, on this Friday night, a solid line of yellow tickets flutters in the heat, just how she likes it.

Lorraine Eaton, (757) 446-2697, lorraine.eaton@pilotonline.com