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Restaurant salvaged by love, tenacity

Instead of grieving, a young widow rolled up her sleeves to keep her husband's dream alive.

By Alessandra Da Pra, Times Staff Writer
Published February 15, 2008

Zandra Turner, left, waits for her order as Lorna Gentles mans the One Stop kitchen, which produces Caribbean specialties.
	[Chris Zuppa | Times]

ADVERTISEMENT [Chris Zuppa | Times] Lorna Gentles, 36 and a mother of four, commutes from Orlando to Tampa to keep One Stop going. "It's a joy because it's something my husband started, and I'm fulfilling his dream," she says. He died in April 2004 at the age of 43.

WEST TAMPA 

Lorna Gentles drives 160 miles round-trip every day to fulfill someone else's dream.

She leaves her Orlando home at 5:30 a.m. while three of her four children are still sleeping. She puts the youngest, 4, in the 1998 black Volvo, turns on her favorite Christian radio station and drives to a cozy jerk restaurant in West Tampa.

Her husband, Winston, opened One Stop four years ago, shortly before the tragedy.

"He really only opened the doors to customers like two weeks, and then he passed," Gentles, 36, said.

Now Gentles has taken over the restaurant with a dozen tables and walls painted green, yellow and black - the flag colors of her late husband's native Jamaica.

"Whatever he dreamed once, I want to make sure I fulfill that dream for him," she said. "Me personally, I don't have a dream."

* * *

The couple met at a Christmas party Winston threw in Brooklyn at his previous restaurant, also called One Stop.

She was a young student at New York City College of Technology who had recently moved to the Big Apple from Trinidad.

He was a young divorcee and restaurant owner who was born in Jamaica but had lived most of his life in this country.

He proposed to her in 1992, on Oct. 7 - her birthday.

Three kids and 10 years later, the family moved to Orlando.

"We wanted to get away from the fast life in New York," Gentles said.

Their daughter Luckylalesha was born nine months later.

Winston bought a truck and drove it around Florida to sell his Caribbean specialties before opening One Stop on N Howard Avenue. He continued driving the mobile kitchen to clubs and bars in the Tampa Bay area even after the restaurant opened. Sometimes he wouldn't close the truck until 3 or 4 in the morning and often slept at a Tampa hotel while his wife stayed home with the kids in Orlando.

"He was trying to provide for us," Gentles said.

* * *

On a Thursday morning in April 2004, Lorna received three phone calls.

The first was from Winston. He was not feeling good but insisted on staying at work.

The second was from a stranger assisting Winston after he had dropped to the ground by his food truck. Winston told his wife to drive to Tampa with the kids.

The third call came as Gentles drove to Tampa. It was someone from University Community Hospital wanting to know whether her husband was allergic to anything before they conducted any medical procedures.

By the time Gentles arrived at the hospital, her husband had died. Later, she learned that a blood clot in his leg had done him in. He was 43.

"I was totally shut down," Gentles said. "It was hard; it was really hard. I try not to think about those days."

She convinced herself that he had not really died. She would wait for him to come home from the restaurant. That way, she said, her days went by faster.

One Stop remained closed for a while, until Gentles began to cope with reality.

"I realized I had no time to grieve because I had four kids to take care of," she said.

She had a choice to make: Go back to her family in New York or stay and roll up her sleeves.

"I don't believe in going back," she said. "I always believe in going forward."

* * *

Gentles was scared the first day she reopened the restaurant. She did not know anyone in Tampa and felt shy.

"I was still in isolation. I didn't want to talk much."

Something changed as the days went by. Customers inquired about "the gentleman," her husband, and Gentles was forced to open up.

"It helped me to talk about him and it helped me hearing about him," she said.

Strangers said Winston used to talk about her all the time.

Winston Carr, 36, had been friends with him. "We both have the same name, so we used to make jokes about it," he said.

The two Winstons used to sit in the restaurant talking about Caribbean cuisine and their wives.

"He was a very hard working man," said Carr. "Very hard working."

Working at One Stop has given her the emotional support she needed, Gentles said. When she steps inside the restaurant, she reconnects with Winston.

"I believe he'll always be around me. I believe that."

Gentles didn't like to cook before, but she said her husband's passions are her passions now.

"People look at me like I am crazy to come here in the morning at 5:30, but I look forward to it," Gentles said. "I go to bed and I can't wait to get up in the morning to turn my key in that door and come in here. It completes me."

Back home, the oldest child, Kazzim, 15, gets his brother and sister ready for school and sees that they get home in the afternoon. Gentles drops off Luckylalesha at a day care center near the restaurant.

She keeps her mind occupied by working and by comforting others, including her patrons.

"She is a sweetheart," said Jenn Maxwell, 32, of Tampa, who eats regularly at One Stop. "She is very warm, very giving. She is definitely about the customers."

Gentles returns the praise: "I don't know what I would do without my customers. They are not only customers; they are family."

[Last modified February 14, 2008, 22:44:29]