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Obituary

Home cooking launched her career

By MARTY CLEAR
Published January 26, 2007

If Xyla Plummer hadn't taken a job in a Temple Terrace bowling alley, a generation of Seffner residents might have had to find somewhere else to eat lunch.

Mrs. Plummer, with her husband, Phillip, owned and operated two popular Seffner restaurants from the early 1970s to the mid 1990s. She first opened The Village Restaurant in 1970, then started Plummers Family Restaurant in 1990.

She died Jan. 14 after several years of declining health. She was 72 years old.

She had never intended to be a businesswoman. Her work as a mother of five children kept her busy, and the little extra money she earned from part-time jobs brought in enough to help keep the family going.

Then one day, inspiration struck.

"She was running the snack bar at a bowling alley," said her son, Phillip Plummer Jr. "She thought, 'You know, I really like doing this. Maybe I ought to open a restaurant'."

Not long after that, she bought a tiny former burger joint on Martin Luther King Boulevard and re-named it The Village Restaurant.

"There were only about six tables," her son said. "Before long no one could get in, it was so crowded."

She moved into a newer, larger building down the street a few years later. Then, in the early 1990s, after a second Village Restaurant had closed, she opened Plummers Family Restaurant on State Road 92. Her son and daughter now operate another restaurant with the same name.

Mrs. Plummer specialized in the kind of down-home cooking she learned while growing up in Kentucky coal country.

Her father died when she was young and her mother got remarried to a pastor, but he didn't live much longer. Like most people in the area, Mrs. Plummer's family was always poor.

"She had kind of a rough childhood," her son said. "Mostly it was just her and her mother."

One bright spot was meeting a young man named Phillip, the love of her life.

"We were what you'd call high school sweethearts," Phillip Plummer said. "She was the first serious girlfriend I ever had. We got it right the first time, we really did, and it lasted so long."

Jan. 11, just two days before she died, the Plummers marked their 55th anniversary.

Mrs. Plummer was still a newlywed when her husband was called to overseas duty in the Army. She and her mother moved to the Brandon area, where they had friends, and Mr. Plummer joined her when his Army stint ended.

Mrs. Plummer's home cooking was one thing that made The Village and Plummers Family restaurants so popular. But Mrs. Plummer's genuine warmth was another factorthat played into her restaurants' success.

"Everyone just really liked her," her son said. "She had a great personality for being around people. She was never blessed with great health, but she loved to go to work. She loved her customers, and she loved her family. She had everything."

Besides her husband and her son, Mrs. Plummer is survived by daughters Patricia Manning, Phyllis Windham, Paula Plummer and Amanda Bergren, eight grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

[Last modified January 25, 2007, 07:46:29]