On Thanksgiving Day in 1948 the Snappy Cafe at 1539 Pacific Avenue hosted a special Thanksgiving dinner party for military personnel away from home. The small cafe was crowded with cooks, waitresses and other workers celebrating the holiday with many military men in uniform. Raymond Chuck Crabb has been identified as the Fort Lewis soldier standing at far right. Chuck Crabb, then 19, was a 1947 graduate of Chapin High School in Iowa. He remembered the holiday dinner party as a "special deal." Afer his discharge from the service in February of 1950, he returned to Iowa and sent for and married Joyce Kerr, a student from Tacoma whom he had originally met in a bus line. The Snappy Cafe was a short-lived restaurant owned by June Westre and Edna Laffaw. June Westre was formerly a cook at the Army-Navy Service Club restaurant. (Additional information provided by a reader; Hampton Chronicle, 12-22-10, p. 3) TPL-10292

Restaurants--Tacoma--1940-1950; Military personnel--Tacoma--1940-1950; Holidays--Tacoma; Restaurant workers--Tacoma--1940-1950; Military uniforms; Thanksgiving Day; Snappy Cafe (Tacoma); Crabb, Raymond Chuck;