Story by Deb Peterson | Photographed by Carlos Hernandez
When Doretha Shipman was a little girl, her older sister, Myra, was responsible for making breakfast one weekend.
“She brought a waffle iron home and made waffles over a wood fire,” Doretha remembers. “Oh, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.”
Years later, Doretha and husband Arvil Leon, while stationed with the Air Force in South Carolina, ate “all the time” at a neighborhood waffle shop.
The lady’s taste for waffles has become legendary.
Today, Doretha makes waffles every Saturday morning for family, friends, and sometimes strangers. The tradition is so old nobody remembers quite how it started, but that’s not important anyway. What matters is that Doretha’s family—7 children (Ann, Treva, Junior, Wesley, Beci, Byron, and Vicki), 20 grandchildren, and 27 greats—gather around her with spouses and friends, whenever they can, to fill up on breakfast and good, old-fashioned love. It isn’t unusual for 30 or more people to show up, although they arrive in shifts.
“We’ll have as many as 80 here for the holidays,” Doretha says.
“Have I met you?” Ann asks Kent Coffey’s guests, James and Ali Maze. Kent is Doretha’s son-in-law, Beci’s husband.
“You cross that threshold and walk into magic,” says Heather Nelson, Doretha’s son Wesley’s girlfriend. “It’s like sacred ground in here. You come here and she just loves all over you.”
When the family got so big that the younger generations had several sets of grandparents, Doretha became known as Waffle Grandma.
“This is where they want to come,” says Doretha’s granddaughter, Robin Lee. “It means the world to me to pass this along to my children.”
Waffles aren’t the only thing for breakfast Saturday mornings. Doretha’s entire house is filled with the wonderful smells of coffee, eggs, bacon, bisquits and gravy, even chocolate gravy. Homemade maple syrup simmers on the stove, too.
The family spreads out, each member finding a spot—Ann’s husband, Carl Jones, reads the paper; Wesley and Heather study something on one of their phones, the kids park in front of the TV.
When Doretha unplugs the waffle iron, the music begins. She sits at the piano and dives into her signature boogie woogie while Kent Coffey plays guitar and Beci sings—Twilight Time, Sunrise Serenade, St. Louie Woman, Sentimental Journey.
Kent recalls the reaction Doretha got in 2009 when he arranged for her to record a CD in the studio he uses, “The guy thought, ‘Here’s a cute little old lady who’s going to play the piano for us.’ She banged the heck out of that piano.”
Doretha has plenty of sheet music and song books, but she doesn’t need them.
“When I read music,” Doretha says, “I think something else would sound good in there.”
Her CD is called, “Growing Up in the Ozark Mountains.”
Ali joins Doretha and Kent on her bass, which is in her car because she and Kent are headed to Pickles Gap to play in a festival. Ann dances with her niece, Lily, Robin’s daughter, while Lily’s brother, Isaac, talks with Grandpa Carl. What about?
“The high school football game,” Isaac says, “and how ornery he is.”
As the crowd begins to disperse, there are hugs all around.
“See you tomorrow!” someone shouts.
After church on Sunday, every Sunday, the family gathers again at Doretha’s house for dinner, and the crowd is even bigger.
“It’s wonderful chaos,” says Treva’s daughter-in-law, Julie Stoops.
Everyone has a job—chopping, cooking, stirring—including Shelley, Junior and Debbie’s daughter. Shelley helps Ann cut sausage, and it’s Shelley’s job to distribute napkins and say the blessing.
“Shelley’s praying!” someone shouts from the kitchen, and the house goes completely silent.
A barely audible prayer comes from Shelley, punctuated with two clear mentions of Silver Dollar City.
“Shelley loves Silver Dollar City,” Heather says, “and it’s sometimes the only thing you can make out in her blessing.”
“She mentions Grandpa Leon sometimes,” Ann says.
Doretha’s husband died in 1999. He and Shelley were close.
After dinner, the house fills with music once again, and, sometimes, with “after-dinner follies,” as Wesley calls them.
The family has been known to go on after-dinner treasure walks, kayaking trips, or caving adventures. Junior and Wesley once hooked a parachute up to a pickup truck and gave rides.
Like any mother, Doretha is still hearing stories from her children for the first time, and the stories are very likely to end up in the weekly column she still writes for the Mountaineer Echo called, ‘The Old Dillard Settlement.’
“I guess it’s just happiness,” Ann says. “No matter what happens, there’s no judgment. It’s just love. It’s perfection. We were taught you can hate what people do, but you can never hate the person.”
“If we were mean to each other growing up,” says Wesley, “she would make us sing ‘Love One Another.’ Every kid in the family knows that song.”
“I appreciate them,” Doretha says of her family. “I’m grateful they think enough of home to come. I feel rich, and I’m so grateful I haven’t lost any of them.”
Doretha’s Waffle Recipe
Separate 3 eggs.
Beat whites until stiff with standing peaks.
Stir yolks.
Add 1 1/2 cups milk and about 1/3 cup vegetable oil.
(Doretha stirs until it looks like she wants it to.)
Fold in 2 cups self-rising flour.
Gently fold in the egg whites.
M! Dec 2011/Jan 2012
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Charlene Merryman
IIIIIIIII’ve eaten those waffles before. Many years ago, my family and I lived across the way from Doretha & Leon. Knowing Doretha and her family was one of the best times of my life. I am so grateful to have had them in my life. And thankful I ran across Marvelous on the computer and to see my friend on here.WOW, Life is great. There are no words to describe Doretha. She’s just a great lady, and no one can deny that.