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BENNINGTON — Much has been written about Sonny’s Blue Benn Diner over the years. And why not: it’s an essential part of Bennington as a battle memorial that defines its skyline.
But a limited-edition book created by Caitlin Randall and Peter Crabtree of The Story Project, now on sale in bookstores across the region, may be the definitive story of how a small North Street diner became the beating heart of a community and a place. where everyone was fed and made to feel welcome.
“Sonny’s Blue Benn: Feeding The Soul of a Vermont Town” is filled with personal interviews with customers, staff and family members, photographs from the Monroe family archive and customers, and new photographs by Crabtree. Sold at Bennington Bookstore, Northshire Bookstore, and Battenkill Books in Cambridge, New York. Not available for purchase online.
“I think the two themes are how hard the family worked and what an egalitarian community meeting place it was and still is,” Crabtree said of what he and Randall discovered while researching, writing and illustrating the book.
So far, the response has been positive, Randall and Crabtree said.
“The book was beyond anything I had ever imagined. It is truly priceless and such a gift to my husband’s legacy,” Mary Lou Monroe said of the book on The Story Project website.
As co-founders of The Story Project, Randall and Crabtree use their extensive journalism experience to create custom books, often for families to pass down as keepsakes. “Sonny’s Blue Ben” was commissioned by a customer and friend of the Monroe family who wished to remain anonymous, they said.
“One of the things we’re really trying to do at The Story Project is really make the books as relevant to the customer as possible,” Randall said. “In this case, the client wanted as many regulars as we did, as well as staff and family, to be interviewed.”
Whoever ordered the book was generous. It is printed by The Studley Press of Dalton, Massachusetts, which specializes in museum and fine art titles. The first edition of 500 volumes is printed on glossy paper in full color and its 174 pages are held together with a sewn binding.
“One thing we’ve heard in response to the book is that people are surprised and that the production values are higher than a typical local history book,” Crabtree said.
A collection of historical and current photographs and anecdotes about famous patrons may suffice. Instead, the book profiles people who worked, congregated and dined at Blue Benn, including longtime employees and regulars — those who grew up here and those who discovered the diner as students at Bennington College or nearby Williams College.
Randall said one of the regulars interviewed for the book was initially surprised there wasn’t more about the food. But after reading, “he realized that, wow, this is for Bennington, this is for the community,” she said.
Randall, a former Reuters reporter and freelance writer for publications including The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal and Art & Antiques, conducted the interviews, researched Blue Benn’s history and wrote the copy. Crabtree, who has worked for the Bennington Banner and Rutland Herald as a reporter, photographer and editor, took new photos, selected archival photos and laid out the book.
Sonny and Mary Lou Monroe and their family owned and operated Blue Benn from December 1973 until 2021 when Mary Lou sold the business to John Getchell amid the COVID pandemic. Franklin “Sonny” Monroe, who signed a lease for the diner on Christmas Eve in 1973, worked there until 2009 and died in 2019.
In the book, customers describe the atmosphere at Blue Benn—the jukeboxes, the friendships with regulars and waitresses, Sonny’s constant culinary innovations, and the prices he kept as low as possible for moderate-income residents. The history of the century-old diner and its changes over the years are also part of the story.
Employees interviewed for the book talked about how the Monroes were paid good wages, including sick and vacation time; for Sonny’s quick wit and culinary skills; and about Mary Lou’s ability when to be firm and when to offer a sympathetic ear and kind advice.
“A few of the [the employees] described how they’d come to her with difficult times in their lives and she’d just be really motherly, and you know, taking them aside and talking to them about their problems or whatever,” Randall added. “ It’s an incredibly loyal staff and we’re talking about waitresses who have been there for 25 to 30 years. I mean, it’s just amazing. You really don’t find that many places.
“I don’t know if it shows in the pictures. But being a witness, you know, participating in the interviews and photographing the people while they were being interviewed, [I was] overwhelmed by the deep affection people felt for Blue Benn,” added Crabtree. “The staff talked about how family-like it was among them in the atmosphere that Mary Lou and Sonny had created and the loyalty they felt.”
As for the illustrations, Mary Lou offered two storage tubs filled with photos and archival materials, Crabtree said, while others were drawn from the crowd.
“Jim Woodward, who is one of the regulars interviewed, has been collecting his own photos and photos of others over time,” Crabtree said. This includes the cover photo of cars parked outside the diner during a snowstorm taken by Larry Coulter on November 26, 1982.
The stories also show how hard the family worked – such as how they spent Christmas Eve in 1973 cleaning the new business that Sonny had just bought.
In the book, Sonny and Mary Lou’s only child, Lisa Laflamme, admits that she had a complicated relationship with the diner. She resented getting on the school bus, smelling of cigarette smoke and the soup of the day, but she loved working with her father and was proud of her family’s success. She went to work there after graduating from Mount Anthony Union High School, along with her husband, Bill Laflamme, and their two sons, Matheson and Marcus.
“I’ve always compared the diner to a sibling, someone I’ve had to compete with for most of my life,” she said. “Yes, I had a really wonderful life and my parents were always there, but the diner was such a big focus. My parents worked incredibly hard and their success created a monster that ate up all their time.
In the tradition of The Work by Studs Terkel, Randall introduced each subject with a brief annotation and then let them talk.
“At first I let them talk a lot about themselves because I kind of wanted to get an idea to write these annotations, I needed to understand who these people were, what was important to them,” Randall said. “So they kept talking about themselves and their lives and Bennington, and I found that it turned pretty easily into a conversation about Blue Ben.”
The book also profiles current owner John Getchell, who tells how he discovered Blue Benn as a theater student at Bennington College in the 1980s and learned from his friend Jim Woodward in 2020 that the diner was for sale and there are pending offers. Through Woodward, he learned that key staff members would return to work at the diner if he bought it. He offered the asking price that Mary Lou was looking for and closed on December 23, 2020.
“My main feeling about taking over Blue Benn is not that it’s my diner. “I’m just the steward,” Getchell said. “For the foreseeable future I am a trustee of the Blue Benn Diner. And my mission is to keep it the same and honor Sony’s legacy.
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