A restaurant that piloted Maine lives

When Connie Russell heard Monday that Pilots Grill restaurant in Bangor would be closing at the end of the year, she made sure to get a New Year’s Eve reservation so she could say goodbye to the old place.

Being on hand for the restaurant’s final night seems only fitting to Russell, considering that her parents took her to Pilots Grill the day the restaurant opened near the runway of the Bangor Airfield in 1940.

“I went there first as a girl and wound up taking my grandchildren there,” said Russell, who grew up on West Broadway and raised her children in the house now owned by Stephen and Tabitha King.

“My parents ate there every night until my father died in 1972, and my family has celebrated so many special occasions there over the years. There is hardly a part of our lives that the restaurant didn’t touch, in fact, and it’s the same for so many others in this area,” Russell said. “Bangor is certainly losing a piece of its history.”

Since the announcement of the closing, the Zoidis family, which has owned and operated the restaurant in two locations throughout its 62-year history, has been swamped with phone calls and letters from patrons all over Maine and beyond with best wishes and fond memories to share.

“I’m not surprised at the reaction we’ve gotten,” said owner Bill Zoidis, whose father, Paul, started the restaurant. “For many people, this has always been more than just a place to eat. Generations of families have come here to celebrate the special events that mark the cycle of life, and that’s not something you forget. One guy told me I may think this is my restaurant, but it really belongs to the people who have been coming for much of their lives.”

For Ruth Penney of Brewer, who lunches at Pilots Grill several times a week with her husband, Jim, the restaurant’s eclectic blend of knotty pine, medieval decor and aviation history has come to feel as comfortable as her own home. It was where she celebrated her graduation from Bangor High School in 1955, where she and her husband met while dating, and where the couple has celebrated nearly every one of their wedding anniversaries since their marriage in 1959.

“Always at Table 32, in the Sky View Room,” said Penney, who cried when a longtime waitress called her Sunday to say the restaurant would close with Zoidis’ retirement.

“There are so many pictures of us at that table over the years, starting when we were young and vigorous up to now, when we’re older and not so vigorous anymore,” said Penney. “Those pictures represent all the things that are so dear to us.”

Paulette Zoidis, Bill’s daughter, said she is honored to have been a part of many of those memories made at Pilots Grill.

“We’re talking about four generations of families, in some cases,” said Paulette, who started working at the restaurant when she was 13, on Thanksgiving Day nine years ago, just as her father had when he was 13 in 1943. “There have been so many active Dow Air Force Base members who met their wives here and then came back to celebrate their anniversaries. One couple celebrated every one of their 62 wedding anniversaries here. I don’t know how many engagement rings I’ve hidden inside lobster claws or desserts or tied to ribbons around the necks of champagne bottles. I can’t tell you how many men have gotten down on one knee to propose in this restaurant.”

For loyal patrons like Russell, losing the famous local restaurant will also mean losing yet another vestige of the old-fashioned charm that once made dining out a special experience.

“We’ve lost a sense of quiet elegance in the world, and that saddens a lot of people of my generation,” she said. “The white napkins and tablecloths, the good manners and wonderful service – the Zoidises have always given Pilots Grill a style all its own, and I’ll miss it terribly when it goes.”

As will Arnold Travis. The retired railroad man from Bangor started eating at Pilots Grill with his wife, Kay, the year the restaurant opened, and still dines there twice a week.

“We opened the place,” Travis said, “and it’s remained our favorite gathering place to this day. Frankly, it’s been so long now that the Zoidises are almost like family to us. We haven’t gotten over the announcement that they’re closing, and won’t for a long while. It’s been such a tradition in our lives. It’s the end of an era, that’s all.”