Rockledge community gathers at pancake house to toast a loved hospital

In they poured to Kelly and Steve Mardis’ place, employees, former employees and plain supporters of Orlando Health Rockledge Hospital. They still stubbornly call it by the name it had for decades, Wuesthoff, as do many in the area, but on April 17 they gathered to say hello and goodbye to one another as well as to the great white landmark that soon will go away.

They had no reception, no party, no sentimental get-together at the hospital, and so the Mardises — Kelly has been a registered nurse at the hospital for 33 years — threw them one at their restaurant, My Island Pancake House, where the staff wear scrubs to honor the health care community.

“We thought we’d get maybe 20 people,” Kelly Mardis said, and nodded toward the two gigantic “Thank you” cakes they displayed at the front of the dining room. “We’ve had probably 200.”

Such are things in Rockledge, where Wuesthoff employed thousands of people in its time and hundreds until recently. But such are things at My Island Pancake House, Merritt Island Pancake House and My Island Smokehouse near Port St. John, which the Mardises also own, every day.

They are there to sell food, of course, but they also are there to contribute something extra to the places in which they exist: spaces for get-togethers, donations of food and money to institutions that need them, faces at meetings, events and parades.

They do holiday drives, host youth sports teams and civic groups and are locally famed for their support of military and law enforcement organizations. They volunteer. They are stalwarts.

They are that because they believe they must be, that restaurants are more than hash-slingers but must personify the “hospitality” in “hospitality industry.”

“This gives us the opportunity to make the community a family, more than just cooking,” Steve Mardis said, and greeted another customer from Wuesthoff. “This is the fun part. The restaurant industry has changed since COVID . . . but we want to make sure this part of it never changes.”

He’s not the only one who believes such things.

As he spoke, volunteers in South Brevard put the finishing touches on an event at the home of Djon Pepaj, owner of Djon’s Steak and Lobster House, among other places, to benefit the Brevard Symphony Orchestra, in which Scott Earick of Scott’s on Fifth and former Florida Today food editor Suzy Leonard will serve as auctioneers and to which Emma Elliott Kirkpatrick of Ossorio in Cocoa Village will bring food.

The night before the Mardises’ event, Charlie Marchica of Genna Pizza Co. was huddled over a little two-top with a customer to discuss how Genna could help the man’s organization, and Marchica shrugged it off as normal, part of things restaurateurs should do.

Genna has donated time, space and food to civic groups, fire departments, law enforcement agencies and schools. “The whole bit,” as he said.

“It is very important for restaurants to be active in the community,” added Marchica, not a man given to pronouncements. “It is good for them to focus on one thing and spend time and grow with them. It’s important to help people in need. It’s better to help people who really need and appreciate it. It’s also important to be passionate about it.”

At a bittersweet event, Rockledge’s people, and Wuesthoff’s, couldn’t have been happier with their pancake house.

“They have become an integral part of our community,” said Deputy Mayor Frank Forester, who shared a table with mayor and former Wuesthoff chairman Tom Price and his wife Theresa; city council member Duane Daski; and city manager Brenda Fettrow. “It’s where people go to share meals and meet friends … but (events such as) this show it’s more than that.”

Kim Kitchin, a longtime Wuesthoff employee most recently in its education department, agreed.

“This (Wuesthoff’s demise) is crushing for a lot of us, though it’s not (last owner) Orlando Health’s fault. This is for all the employees we first knew 30 years ago and it’s brought out people we hadn’t seen in years,” Kitchin said.

“It’s like our little Brevard County community, still intimate and personal. I love Rockledge and I loved working at Wuesthoff. We’re so grateful to Kelly and Steve for this.”

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To contact Lyn Dowling, email lyndowling@yahoo.com or message via 321 Flavor: Where Brevard Eats.