Shirlene Miller, Town Topic chef and KC icon for 47 years, dies at 85

On a warm Friday night in July of 1981, Shirlene Watkins Miller clocked into the Town Topic Hamburgers kitchen on Broadway Boulevard, ready to spend another graveyard shift showing her 15-year-old daughter how to properly clean dishes.

But less than a mile south, two glass walkways in the lobby of one of the most popular luxury hotels in Kansas City had just collapsed.

It was 8 p.m., about an hour after the Hyatt Regency hotel’s two suspended glass walkways crashed into the lobby during a big band dance contest, killing 114 people and injuring more than 200 others. Dust clouded the air. Sirens blared as police rushed to the scene and firefighters worked feverishly with pickaxes, shovels and their hands to rescue people.

Miller, her hands steady, just fired up the grill, a reservoir of calm in a sea of panic.

It was her constant, a secret weapon for everything from crowds of people waiting in three hour lines to wayward travelers showing up alone. Since starting work in the early 60’s, she’d watched the city around her change from behind the Town Topic counter, often taking orders, cooking burgers and making conversation. To the many who passed by calling her “Mom” or “Mama”, she was a safe place.

‘We knew she loved us’

Miller came to Kansas City by way of Pea Ridge, Arkansas, where she was born in 1937, and then St. Louis, where she met her late husband, Marvin Miller, as a teenager. The couple had seven children and later on, many more grandchildren.

When her youngest child turned one in 1962, she used her experience as a waitress to get a job at Town Topic.

Her daughter, Roberta Collins, remembers Miller calling everybody at the diner “Babe.”

“The more they’d come in the more she’d learn their names and their families,” Collins said. “She’d stand behind the counter when we weren’t busy and just chit chat back and forth with them.”

When Collins was young, she worked beside her mother, like many of Miller’s children and grandchildren.

“She’d say get over here and do these damn dishes,” Collins said.

At the age of four or five, Collins’ daughter, Shirlene Stalker, also went to work.

“You gotta be busy, you gotta bus some dishes, you gotta take out the trash, make shakes. You gotta do something to work for this family. Nothing’s free,” Stalker said, smiling and mimicking her grandmother’s gestures.

“I’d bring her with me and let her stand at the sink,” Collins said, chuckling. “When you were working with mom and you needed your ass chewed, she’d give it to you.”

As a boy, Bob Miller remembers cooking with “Mama” in Town Topic, and in one instance, sliding a freshly fried grilled cheese across the counter, only for it to splatter onto the floor in front of a customer. They all laughed.

“She had a good sense of humor,” Bob Miller said. “And I’ll tell you what, more than anything, she was compassionate.”

Both he and Roberta worked with her to make coffee, hamburgers and hot chocolate for first responders in the nights that followed the tragic Hyatt Regency collapse.

“It was somber and hectic,” Collins said.

“[Police] had the bodies all over the sidewalk. It was terrible,” Bob Miller said.

But Shirlene Miller was accustomed to the chaos.

“The down and outs, mom would get them a cup of coffee and let them stay there. Then she’d turn to me and say ‘Later on why don’t you give them a sandwich?’” he said. Then she’d pull out her purse out from the cabinet and slyly drop cash in the register, Bob Miller remembered.

“Sometimes I’d be a little critical of the people coming by all dirty,” Bob Miller said. “And she’d say, no matter how they dress or what they look like we’re all human beings and deserve respect and kindness.”

In Shirlene Miller’s 47 years working at Town Topic, she’d seen everything. Her family said a wedding was officiated under the diner’s neon sign; her granddaughter went into labor while eating chili at the counter; drunk brawls were broken up on her watch, at one point with a sugar shaker; people running from trouble found refuge behind her counter. She made burgers for young, displaced kids and offered many others without a home a place to rest.

She retired in 2009 after struggling with pressure ulcers in her legs from standing all night. She spent the following years with family and going to the casino. She died at the age of 85 on Nov. 16.

Her service was attended by many, all tearfully sharing different versions of Shirlene Miller’s crazy adventures. Some imagined she was drinking a beer somewhere with her husband, looking down at her loved ones and wondering why they were so emotional.

“She never said I love you,” said Bob Miller. “She’d say ‘I know’, because we knew she loved us and that we loved her.”