One day after being told by the Girard City Council that they were not sure they could help with a sidewalk, Charles Gibbs got the help that he needed.
On Monday, Gibbs, owner of The Pie Hole restaurant on South Ozark in Girard, asked the Girard City Council to fix 44 feet of sidewalk in front of his establishment because he said it was “unsafe.”
Tuesday, Gibbs received a check for approximately $2,000 to make those repairs from Kirk and Katie Conroy, husband and daughter of the late Dyanna Conroy, who died in a downtown fire March 2 that also destroyed two businesses on the square.
“These people can't afford to do this,” Kirk Conroy said. “My wife was very kind-hearted and she would have asked me to do this.”
Members of the council said, Monday, that because there was not a city policy regarding helping commercial business with sidewalk repair, a policy would need to be drafted before they could help Gibbs. The city does have a policy to help residential areas with sidewalk replacement.
That left Gibbs a little frustrated.
“When I left the City Council meeting, I was a little disappointed because I think the city needs to do what they can to help businesses,” Gibbs said. “The town needs to grow and not decrease.”
But, because his wife was a regular customer at the restaurant and would have asked him to help, Kirk Conroy said that it was just natural to help Gibbs.
“She loved the tuna on wheat bread and ate there a lot,” Kirk Conroy said. “I just felt sorry for these people and she loved to go there.
“This is something that Dyanna would have wanted.”
Now, Gibbs said that he has been in contact with a contractor and hopes to have the sidewalk and curb fixed sometime this week.
“Since he did that, we are going to dedicate that outside in memory of his wife,” Gibbs said. “We are going to put a plaque out there and everything.”
Kirk Conroy said that helping out another business in Girard was something that Dyanna Conroy would have wanted more than any memorial or other form of remembrance.
“She would not have wanted me to put up a memorial because she was not that type of a person,” Kirk Conroy said. “But, she has always been the type of person to help others and I talked to my daughter and she thought it was a great idea.”
Matthew Clark can be reached at matthew.clark@morningsun.net or at 620-231-2600, Ext. 140
