The restaurant business may not have been in Gary Jackson’s blood, but the native Ardmoreite decided to become a restauranteur at a young age.
“My mother and dad used to take me into the Tower Restaurant run by D. Allen Wint,” Jackson said. “I’d see D. Allen sitting up there in a booth with three other guys just drinking coffee, and I thought that seems like a pretty good deal to me.”
After graduating from Oklahoma State University with a degree in hotel and restaurant management and getting his first major job in the industry, he discovered it was a little bit more difficult than drinking coffee.
“When I got out, the first job I had was at a group of restaurants at a truck stop that were open 24/7, and I just worked all the time,” Jackson said. “After three years of that I thought surely there’s got to be something better.”
Jackson knew someone who was opening a high-end steakhouse in Oklahoma City, and he went to work there for almost a decade. With the restaurant’s success, the owners decided to send him to Memphis to open a new location. While in Memphis he met his wife, Jeannine.
“I’m originally from Mississippi, and Gary hired me as a hostess at a restaurant in Memphis,” Jeannine said. “That was in ’76, and we got married in ’78.”
The Memphis restaurant was a success, and the Jacksons were sent to cities across the country opening other new locations.
“We opened one in Birmingham, one in Houston, one in St. Louis, and then we had two in Oklahoma City,” she said.
While in Oklahoma City, the Jacksons decided to purchase Fireside Dining from the Ledbetters who first built the restaurant. The Jacksons came on as new owners in 1982.
“When we bought this place, it was the big time,” Jeannine said. “That was right in the middle of the oil boom, so we had more money than we knew what to do with for about two years. Then that all dried up, and there was a recession.”
“That’s when we started Café Alley down at Daubes,” Gary said. “It was just a little sandwich place when we got it, but we took it and made it into a restaurant. We were only open for lunch at that time, and then we’d come out here and do dinner.”
After running Café Alley for approximately two decades, the Jacksons sold it to the Nortons who continue to run Café Alley to this day.
“Jasyn (Norton) and some of his friends washed dishes for me out here when they were in high school, so I’d known him for years,” Gary said. “When he and Samantha (Norton) came back to town, they asked about buying Fireside, but I talked them into buying Café Alley because I thought that would offer them more chance for growth.
“And the rest is history. They opened for dinner, and then they were able to expand with the Dew Drop and The Commodore. They’ve done a great job with it.”
Moving further into the 21st century, the Jacksons continued to scale back their operations at Fireside going down to three evenings a week prior to Covid. They came back after Covid only doing dinner service on Friday and Saturday evening.
The Jacksons’ last dinner service as owners of Fireside was March 8, and the new owners officially closed on the restaurant on March 12. However, Gary said he will stay in a mentor capacity for a few weeks, and the new owners will be keeping the same staff.
As for the Jacksons, they plan to do more traveling now that they are retired.
“For all these years, any travel plans we had have been based on what’s going on at the restaurant,” Gary said. “We plan on going to visit our kids and grandkids more and taking more trips while we still can.”
