John Heaphy works behind the bar in 1984 at John’s House of Prime in his early-days ownership of Lima restaurants. Courtesy of John Grindrod Before I begin Part 2 of the John Heaphy story, I’d like to clarify something from last week’s column when I used what I thought was a pretty clear figure of speech, referring to John as the valedictorian of The School of Hard Knocks. It seems I unwittingly misled some who were reading perhaps a bit too quickly and thought I referred to John as the valedictorian of his 1978 LCC graduating class.
Certainly, John didn’t say that in the interviews we did, and I would never on my own attempt to polish a résumé that, given his subsequent entrepreneurial successes, certainly needs no embellishment. For Heaphy, the head of Good Foods Restaurant, and one of Lima’s most visible entrepreneurs, at 64 years of age, there’s time for reflection of his career path through the years. Recalls Heaphy with a laugh, “When I was old enough to find my way to Lost Creek Golf Course, at the end of play on Sunday, I’d walk the course and scour the weeds and creek and find dozens of golf balls.
I’d clean them up and, on the following Saturday, I’d go back out there and sell them back to the same guys who lost them!” Following his 1981 deli in Cook Tower, Heaphy expanded. By the age of 26 as a young husband and father of the first two of his four children, he owned four local restaurants, the White Burch Inn (formerly John’s House of Pr.
