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Column for May 21, 2004
Ginger Ale being poured into a glass. There was also a warehouse on the site
where many oak barrels filled with Vernor’s Ginger Ale syrup were stored
waiting for the flavor to mellow. Barrels were even stored in underground
tunnels between the warehouse and the sandwich shop. One customer who recalls
going there was Charles Weinstein who as a child bought Vernor’s Ginger
Ale for his father, Morris Weinstein, who didn’t want to be seen patronizing
the rival business as he co-owned the M&S Beverage Company. In 1932,
sign painters John Gonsowski and Keith Martin, working for General Signs,
painted a three-story advertising mural for Vernor’s on the north wall
of the Sharp Hardware & Implement Company building next door, later known
as the Peerless Mattress & Furniture Company building, which faces the
Vernor’s sandwich shop. Mr. Gonsowski was born in Poland and came to
Michigan in 1913. He showed his European sensitivities in regard to his painting
style. He painted smiling Vernor’s gnomes working out of a castle, stacking
oak barrels which say "flavor mellowed 4 years in wood" on the mural. Gonsowski
painted other Vernor’s advertising signs throughout the Flint area.
In 1951, Vernor’s moved the oak barrels from the site and James Vernor
II sold the sandwich shop to Bill Thomas, the manager of Kewpee Hamburgs,
a downtown Flint fixture since 1923. Vernor’s took down the pouring
bottle sign and Bill Thomas erected a neon Kewpee sign with the kewpee doll
logo. 
The Kewpee Hotel (the "Hotel" would later be dropped to avoid confusion from
customers who thought the business offered lodging instead of hamburgers)
was founded by Samuel V. Blair who was nicknamed "Old Man Kewpee" or "The
Hamburger King." He was a colorful man who claimed that he originated the
flat bun and invented the ‘deluxe’ hamburger. Before arriving in
Flint in 1923, he had been an iron molder for 30 years, sold vacuum cleaners
and life insurance, studied horticulture and operated orchards. He opened
the first Kewpee Hotel at 415 Harrison Street in a wagon-like building. Legend
has it that it was buried on the site when it was replaced by a real building
which had numerous renovations over the years and was torn down in 1979.
For Kewpee Hotel’s 20th Anniversary in 1943, he gave that day’s
customers war savings stamps. 
William
V. "Bill" Thomas came to Flint in 1933 and started working for Blair in 1938.
On April 1, 1944, 60 years ago, Thomas took over management of the Harrison
Street restaurant, leasing the restaurant from Blair who retired.
Characteristically, Blair threw a big retirement party for himself inviting
several friends. Blair died in 1945. The two downtown Flint Kewpees were
not the only ones. Why the Kewpee restaurants were called Hotels are lost
to history. At its peak, there were more than 200 Kewpee restaurants before
World War II. The early Kewpees were not franchises and there was no group
association. Each differently-owned Kewpee had its own menu with their own
different style of hamburger. Bill Thomas took full ownership of the Flint
Kewpee Hamburgs in 1958, but he couldn’t afford the ownership rights
to the Kewpee name which Blair sold to Ed Adams of Toledo. In the early 1960s,
Adams wanted to switch from a flat royalty fee to a full franchising arrangement.
In 1967 Adams demanded a percentage of the profits from each Kewpee in place
of the licensing fees without providing additional support. Because Bill
Thomas did his own advertising and promotion for his Kewpee restaurants,
he decided to change the name. So on May 12, 1967, the Flint Kewpee restaurants
were renamed Bill Thomas’ Halo Burger restaurants. Only the name changed.
Everything else including the food remained the same. Bill Thomas died on
Christmas Eve of 1973. Today, Bill’s son Terry Thomas presides over
a chain of 10 Halo Burger restaurants and take-out stations throughout the
Flint area. Halo Burger also manages the University of
Michigan–Flint’s Campus Café. 
After Vernor’s sold the sandwich shop to Bill Thomas, the maintenance
of the Vernor’s mural next door had stopped. Over the years it started
to become faded. Bill Thomas wanted to fix it up, but the owner of Peerless
Mattress resisted having the mural maintained. It wasn’t until the Greater
Flint Arts Council’s Urban Walls Committee, which commissioned murals
in downtown Flint, stepped in wanting to restore the Vernor’s mural
that Peerless Mattress finally agreed. Halo Burger donated $27,000 for the
restoration of the mural in 1979 which included two additions to the mural
in place of blank wall space. The restoration and addition were done by Donna
Devantier and Michael Perry of Eller Outdoor Advertising. Original artist
John Gonsowski was on hand during the restoration. On the large mural addition
to the right of the original mural, a small extension to the castle, an open
field and houses in the background were added. As a tribute to Halo Burger,
a cow with a halo over its head was painted on the large mural addition.
Halo Burger’s mascot is an angelic cow. After the mural was completed,
the mural was coated with a sealant to protect it. When Vernor’s built
the sandwich shop, they included a small building or a "guard house" and
gates for the delivery trucks to go through. The small building was at one
time Pete’s Diner run by Peter Parascos. Through the years it also housed
May’s Lunch, Tom’s Lunch and Thomas’ Pantry Shoppe. It finally
became storage before it was torn down to aid in the mural restoration and
provide additional parking for Halo Burger. The small mural addition which
occupies where the small building stood features a painted guard house for
the castle with a winking gnome looking through the window. 
In
1995, the Peerless Mattress building was gutted in an arson fire which forced
Peerless to move to the suburbs. The Vernor’s mural was undamaged from
the fire, but the building was mural was painted on was threatened. Fund-raising
to buy the building and fix it up was successful, saving it from demolition,
and the Greater Flint Arts Council moved into the former Peerless Mattress
building. In 2001, the mural received a second restoration. Steve Davidek
and Stephen Heddy (both of whom also worked on a mural restoration in the
Genesee County Court House) worked on the second restoration of the
Vernor’s mural which was funded by the Ruth Mott Foundation. The owner
of Vernors in 1979 did not help the first restoration. But for the second
restoration, Dr Pepper/Seven Up, Inc., which took over Vernors in 1994,
contributed funds to help in the second restoration. 
Over
the years, the Halo Burger location which was formerly Vernor’s and
Kewpee had additions built which are faithful to the building’s original
design. The Flint Kewpee locations pioneered drive-thru take out windows.
When the original Kewpee/Halo Burger was torn down in 1979 to make room for
parking for the new University of Michigan–Flint downtown campus, the
staff moved to a new Halo Burger location on Court Street near Center Road
serving Flint’s east side. There are only six Kewpee locations
left–two Michigan locations both in Lansing, one in Racine, Wisconsin
and three at Kewpee’s current home base of Lima, Ohio. Halo Burger has
a web site under construction at
http://www.haloburger.com which will
be impressive when it’s finished. The Racine, Wisconsin Kewpee has a
web site at http://www.kewpee.com The
Vernor’s story is told at
http://www.pww.on.ca/vernors.htm
Vernors lost the apostrophe in its name when the company went public following
the death of James Vernor III in 1957 at age 39 because the company needed
additional capital. The Vernor family reluctantly sold the ginger ale company
in 1966 because of estate tax problems dating back to the death of James
Vernor II in 1954. Other relevant links include the official Greater Flint
Arts Council web site at
www.gfn.org/gfac/ and a web page devoted
to the renovation of the GFAC building at
http://www.roweincorp.com/focusweb/GFAC/GFAC_project_specifics.htm
which, despite what it says, was never occupied by Vernor’s even though
the mural was painted on its north wall. Whenever you go to Halo Burger, don’t forget to order a Boston Cooler made with Vernors and vanilla ice cream. Yum! Halo Burger was recently voted Michigan’s #1 hamburger. So whenever you visit the Flint area, stop and eat at Halo Burger. The old Kewpee slogan is "Hamburg, pickle on top! Makes your heart go flippity flop!" Halo Burger’s slogan is "Seven days without a Halo Burger makes one weak". This column could not have been completed without the assistance of the following people whom I give many thanks to: Randy Farb of the Flint Public Library, Greg Fiedler of the Greater Flint Arts Council, Terry Thomas at Bill Thomas’ Halo Burger and Karen Kassel who is the great-granddaughter of original Vernor’s mural painter John Gonsowski.
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