To the Editor:

This morning during our Saturday morning breakfast at the Sandy Hook Diner we received some sad news. The impending sale of the property that the diner sits on has left the restaurant’s future uncertain. Along with sympathy for Ellie, the owner, who is navigating a challenging business situation and trying her best to do right by her staff, we are sad for ourselves and for our town. Our hearts are breaking.

We have had the privilege of frequenting the Sandy Hook Diner near weekly since we moved to town 7 years ago. The food is as delicious as the atmosphere is warm. We chose Sandy Hook as our “forever home” because of places like the Sandy Hook Diner and because of people like its staff and “regulars”.

People who see us walk in the door and run to the kitchen to make up a fruit cup for our toddler and grab our coffees before we even sit down. People who know our children by name and comment on how big they’re getting because they’ve seen them nearly every weekend since they were born. People who meet their elderly parents for breakfast or lunch on a weekly or even daily basis. People who say, “I’ll have my usual” and people who know, without asking, what that is.

Weekends at the Sandy Hook Diner are filled with delicious homemade breakfasts, cups of coffee that are never cold or empty and friendly conversations between tables. The staff — some of the hardest working people I’ve ever met — are unflappable, warm and sweet. Losing the diner would be a true loss for our family and many others, but it would be a loss for the Sandy Hook community as well.

We’ve watched a lot of “progress” happen in our little hamlet over the last 7 years, which I know is nothing compared to what people who have lived here far longer have seen. Our biggest fear is that the new owner of the property will view progress as razing the nearly 100-year-old building and constructing something new that prices out businesses like the Sandy Hook Diner.

We would lose our future breakfasts with our grown children, hardworking members of our community would lose their daily early morning breakfasts at the counter before work, families would lose their meeting place, and Sandy Hook would lose its heart.

Lindsay Greene

Sandy Hook