It is 4 a.m. in Bridgeport. Nearly everything is dark and motionless on this particular morning.

 

Up to three times each week, just before 4 a.m., that changes just off U.S. Route 50 West as the headlights of a Honda HR-V being driven by Chase Robey cuts through the darkness. As he turns off Main Street, he makes a quick turn on to Elm Street to make a familiar stop.

 

Robey is on his way to pick up his grandmother Kathryn “Katie” Ielapi. Many know Katie, as her friends call her, for her long-time business involvement in the city. Her children still lovingly call her mom, and the term Grandma is reserved for her nearly two dozen grandchildren.

 

Those who do not know her in Bridgeport, Harrison County, and plenty of places beyond, know her work. I will get back to that shortly.

 

It should be noted on March 14, Katie Ielapi turned 90 years old. For those thinking Chase Robey is picking up Grandma for a doctor’s appointment or to keep her company, you would be wrong.

 

Katie Ielapi is being picked up to go to work. She is going to work in the same restaurant she and her late husband Joseph Ielapi, along with her late brother-in-law Michael, started in 1957.

 

“My dad (Joseph) and my Uncle Michael put that restaurant together with my mother there by their side,” said Katie’s son Jimmy. “It happened not long after they got married in June of 1956.”

 

The restaurant? You may have heard of it as it still operates today – Twin Oaks.

 

The fact it is still open decades later is impressive enough. The fact that one of the original members of ownership is still working multiple days each week – and early at that – is even more impressive.

 

“She makes the dough for the pizza shells two to three days a week,” said Jimmy. “She is still going strong at 90 years old and starting at 4 a.m.”

 

Jimmy said she is joined by Chase, her son-in-law Rob Vincent, 82-year-old Ruby Pyle, and the relatively new addition of Jimmy Lafferty. Jimmy Ielapi also joins in the fun a little bit later.

 

The total for the early-morning work? The group led by Katie Ielpi hand makes around 350 pizza shells each morning.

 

“She hasn’t really stopped, and she was side by side with my father until he passed away in March of 2008,” said Jimmy. “She’s still there and she hasn’t slowed down much.

 

“She’s one of those ladies that if she stops, she thinks that will be the end,” he continued. “If she’s not working in the restaurant, you can find her painting, working with flowers, or raking leaves. She stays busy, and always has.”

 

Despite the grind of a family restaurant, Katie Ielapi found time to raise four children. She had one son – Jimmy – and three daughters in Michele, Sue Ann, and Elizabeth. For those who know her children, they know that she was probably even more successful there than she has been overseeing an establishment as intertwined with the history of the City of Bridgeport as Indians football and Michael Benedum.

 

Her marriage to Joseph Ielapi in the 1950s came on the heels of Joseph already knowing a bit about the food business. Probably not surprising to many, the Ielapi family is related to the Minard family and as history has shown us, making and serving food became a DNA trait that has spawned more than one successful Italian restaurant in North Central West Virginia.

 

“My dad worked at Pittsburgh Plate prior to the restaurant, but he and my uncle both worked at Minard’s (Restaurant),” said Jimmy. “My grandmother was a Minard and that was where that got started.

 

“They got a taste of what it was like and wanted their own restaurant and started talking about it,” he continued. “Here we are nearly 70 years later and just about every business that came from Minard’s is still around.”

 

Wanting to have a restaurant is one thing. Actually, going ahead and doing it, and finding the right location, is another. The brothers, with Katie heavily involved, did both.

 

“Once they made the decision, they had to find a place. They found this little block building owned by a state trooper,” said Jimmy. “It’s the same building today, but back then it was just a little snack shop downstairs and the police officer lived upstairs. The restaurant has come a long way.”

 

Sixty-seven years later, there is only one original employee left in Katie. The employee has stared down cancer twice and at more than nine decades of age either will not stop or simply cannot stop.

 

The family made sure they were going to take care of the person who took care of them on her 90^th birthday. This past Saturday and Sunday the restaurant was closed to celebrate Katie’s special day. Her gift request was a special one.

“She wanted all of her grandkids to come and celebrate with her,” said Jimmy.

 

They came, and plenty of other family members as well. They arrived from Las Vegas, from New York, Pittsburgh, Nashville, and parts of Virginia and multiple other destinations.

 

In total, there were 22 grandchildren on hand – 11 of them great grandchildren (with one more on the way). They celebrated on Saturday for the birthday and on Sunday at 1 p.m. they did what the family did growing up.

 

“We had our traditional Sunday meal with the family,” said Jimmy. “I know she was happy.”

 

If anyone deserves happiness, it is Katie Ielapi. Not because she has survived health scares or saw a simple block wall building become a destination restaurant providing memories for countless others. She deserves it because she has spent 90 years on this earth loving her family and others.

 

And the hardcore love carries on to this day. Don’t believe it?

 

“When she cooks at home, she cooks enough for all of us,” said her daughter Michele Ielapi Robey. “She will call and have it all packaged for us to take home to feed our families. She feels we are too busy or too tired to cook.”

 

That, my friends, is love. And it is the same love that has prepared meals for hundreds of thousands of people for decades. It is the same love that has blessed the lives of countless family members and friends by just being in it.

 

I am thankful to be on the list of those hundreds of thousands who has dined at Twin Oaks. I just hope I am on the birthday invite list when she turns 100.

 

Happy birthday Mrs. Ielapi. Thanks for all you have done and all the love you have given – from 4 a.m. and on.

 

Editor's Note: All photos used with this story used with permission of the Ielapi family. Top photo shows Katie Ielapi just after 4 a.m. getting to work on one of hundreds of pizza shells followed by the finished product. In the third photo she is shown with the treats in place celebrating her 90th birthday. She is shown with her four children in the next photo, while the original Twin Oaks building is shown in 1957. In the fifth image, she shows she still has no problem preparing a plate for a meal. Bottom photo shows Katie Ielapi with her grandchildren during her birthday celebration.