Dolly Dimple Schumann Kester visits Stilwell
by Renee Fite
City of Stilwell Director of Public Relations and Media
Once known for owning and operating Stilwell Cafe, Dolly Dimple Schumann Kester was a friend to everyone who wanted a friend. She was in Stilwell in October 2024 and visited Mayor Jean Ann Wright. In fact, the two performed a short skit written by Kester about being a pinup girl.
Kester wore a cape covered in pins collected throughout the past few decades from political to funny. In the skit, Kester told the mayor she’d like to apply for the job of pinup girl and the mayor told her she’d be a good candidate if the City had a job for a pin up girl.
When Kester was 10, she first came from San Diego to Stilwell to visit relatives.
This time she took a road trip with her daughter, Jan Kester, from Las Vegas where they both live.
“I’ve had fun seeing how Stilwell is growing,” said Kester. “You’re doing such a great job, Jean Ann, congratulations on your award for Mayor. The town looks so good, it’s thriving, and I really like that park downtown, Fletcher, it’s wonderful.”
Part of that progress is change. Wright told her it broke her heart to take down the old cafe, but the roof had caved in and the building was full of mold.
Dolly Dimple Schumann Kester visits with Mayor Jean Ann Wright at City Hall in Stilwell.
photo: Renee Fite
As she explained how Stilwell became her home, Kester said her parents moved from the San Diego area to Las Vegas for work in 1963.
Later on she was working at the MGM Hotel in Las Vegas as a waitress in the coffee shop when it burned down.
“My husband [Earl] was from Oklahoma and I wanted a cafe so we came here. The Stilwell Cafe had been closed for a few months so we leased the building, purchased the equipment and opened on February 28, 1981.”
She bought the building halfway through, she said. “I had a working girl’s special, half a sandwich and a cup of soup for $2.95,” she said.
Her prices were low, so she learned about finances as she went and eventually charged a little more.
Kester turned 48 on March 2 of 1981 after opening the cafe.
“Now I have grandchildren that age,” Kester said.
For eight years, Kester ran the cafe. She also opened a small store next to the cafe called Strawberry Patch.
“We had a lot of fun and made a lot of friends. We stayed open on Thanksgiving to feed people who didn’t have family,” she said.
One customer she recalled was Chloe Jones, who smoked a cigarette until the ash was long, and liked to tell the staff who to wait on and to clean off tables.
When she sold the cafe to Ferris Gaches, February of 1989, she opened a larger Strawberry Patch in the old Otasco Building.
“We rented booths for consignment, it was a flea market type, with antiques, too, all kinds of things,” said Kester.
During that time she also volunteered with the Chamber of Commerce and Soroptimist’s.
“We brought back the Christmas parade when I president of the Chamber. The first year it was a fire engine with Santa riding on it and Vera Honeycutt riding her bicycle with a dog in the basket,” said Kester.
“Barbara Pumpkin was vice president and Diane Kelley so much help, she was a little bulldog getting people to help.”
She remembered when someone drove through the cafe window, forgetting to put their car in reverse. “There were no more matching bricks from the Stilwell bring founders so they made the window bigger,” she said.
Kester wrote a newspaper column called Chamber Music. One time she went into the newspaper office to talk to Sam Love. She realized she had put her pants on backwards when she tried to put her hands in her pockets.
“I told Sam that it better not end up in the Merry Go Round, and instead it said, “Dolly doesn’t know if she is coming or going.”
”She coined the phrase, ‘Come Home to Stilwell’ even though she wasn’t from here.
“I was new, but it felt like home,” said Kester. She liked the country environment and the open feel.
When her grandson Christopher was born, she brought him to work with her, before leaving the Strawberry Patch to take care of him.
Today, she travels to Oklahoma about once a year, to visit grandchildren in Bixby and family in Stilwell. They rented a home at the lake through VRBO.
“It’s beautiful out there and family will come to see us. I’ll see Violet Gore, we share the grandchildren in Bixby. I just love her,” she said.
After Kester’s husband died, she stayed in Stilwell four years. When her daughter invited her to move to Las Vegas to her home, she did.
“Las Vegas is beautiful but on steroids now. In 1963 it was a small town. We lived out by Sunrise Mountain where the Mormon Tabernacle is,” she said.
Today Kester is 91, full of energy, good humor and enjoys keeping up with her friends on Facebook.
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City of Stilwell, Oklahoma
Address: 20 S. 1st St., Stilwell, OK 74960
Phone:
918-696-7143
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