Betty Jean Meis was co-owner of the Firehouse Restaurant and bar in Windsor, which her son likened to the fictional bar in the TV sitcom “Cheers.”
Meis knew everyone in Windsor and everyone knew her, said her son, Rick Meis of Windsor.
Betty Jean Meis was 74 when she died Dec. 27 in Loveland.
Sometimes people lingered so long over coffee in the restaurant “that they’d take a break by going home for lunch,” said Rick Meis, laughing.
The Firehouse business grew with the town. When Betty Jean Meis and her husband, Floyd Meis, opened the place in the 1970s, there were 1,500 Windsor residents. Now there are 20,000, Rick Meis said.
Betty Jean Meis met her future husband when she got a job at a bakery where he worked.
They opened the Windsor Home Bakery in 1969, then added pizza and sandwiches, calling the place Windsor Home Bakery and Pizza Villa.
As the town changed, they moved the place to the Windsor town center mall and opened the Firehouse Restaurant in a building adjacent to the bakery. They sold the bakery and expanded the restaurant with a bar and banquet room. The restaurant was known for fresh rolls and pies, German sausage and eggs for breakfast, and meat loaf and chicken and dumplings for lunch.
Betty Jean Meis got to the restaurant at 5 a.m. nearly every day of the year except the major holidays.
“She was the front-end person,” Rick Meis said. “She wanted to be with the people, seat them and talk with them.”
She also did the scheduling, the books, the hiring, the training and just listening.
“She was a mother to many of the employees,” Rick Meis said.
But she expected them to work. One of her favorite sayings was, “If you have time to lean, you have time to clean.”
The Firehouse lived up to its name. It was decorated with red carpet and black chairs and was full of pictures of former Windsor firemen, dating to the early 1900s. The family got some fire paraphernalia, including a hose cart, a copper and brass fire extinguisher, a model of a tanker and helmets.
The stuff had been stored away and was “brought out and dusted off,” said Rick Meis.
The couple sold the operation in 1999. The current owners renamed it Fire Station Restaurant and Back Draft Lounge.
Betty Jean Weber was born Sept. 10, 1931, in Severance and graduated from high school in nearby Windsor. She married Floyd Meis on Aug. 3, 1949.
In addition to her husband and son, she is survived by sons Dan Meis of Los Angeles and Gary Meis of Fort Collins; daughter Claudene Starck of Windsor; 11 grandchildren; four great-grandchildren; and her sister, Bessie Crom of Rockwell, Texas.
Staff writer Virginia Culver can be reached at 303-820-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com.
