The Heart of Edmond is Around the Corner
The heart of Edmond is just Around the Corner. The familiar downtown restaurant proudly proclaims that they “cook with love,” and if you have ever met Around the Corner’s owner Charlotte Worsham, you know that’s exactly right.
Around the Corner is a surprising find along Broadway in downtown Edmond. Immediately upon entering, you realize this isn’t your average eatery. The restaurant has been in place for the last 50 years and has been owned by Worsham for the last 25.
The walls are filled with Edmond artifacts and most noticeably, roosters, a lot of roosters. Worsham, was given her first set of roosters by her grandmother in the 1960’s. Then, when she bought the restaurant from its previous owner, there was a rooster hanging on the wall. She took it as a sign.
The massive accumulation of roosters ever since is a testament to her strong relationship with her hungry diners. “Customers bring them in to me; they just keep adding to it,” she said. “It’s not me that keeps the restaurant going. I just have the key. It’s the people that come in day after day.”
Her cooking may have a lot to do with the repeat customers. The menu includes all day breakfast and homemade chicken fry, among many other dishes. But the atmosphere is an equal draw of the crowd. “I want you to feel comfortable, like you were in your mama’s kitchen, or your Grandma’s- and I’m 66- so now I say Grandma’s,” says Worsham.
As a breast cancer survivor, Worsham’s business puts more than love into the menu. There’s also a whole lot of hope stirred into every dish. She credits her success in the kitchen to her faith and desire to give back.
It has been 18 years since Worsham was diagnosed with breast cancer. A crushing blow that came in the same year she got a divorce. “I don’t know why I didn’t die,” she says. “Chemo kills all the good stuff when it’s killing the bad. Cancer takes over your life.”
Worsham recalls being ready to give up one night and asking for it to end. Instead, she got the best night’s sleep she ever had, got up and went to work. “It was about two o’clock the next day and I thought ‘my gosh, I’m still here’.” She credits her higher power and her customers for pulling her through.
“My hair had fallen out three weeks after one chemo treatment and you could just run your hand through and it would come out. One morning I came in and the coffee drinkers, the old men, said ‘what is wrong with you today? And I said ‘all my hair fell out’ and they all pulled their caps off and said ‘ours won’t grow back, now what are you crying about, yours will’ and that’s how they pulled me through it – things like that.”
Now with all of these years cancer-free, all Worsham wants to do is give back. “You never know what’s going on in the customer’s life and you just don’t know what you might be doing by saying ‘we’re glad you’re here.’ So all I’m trying to do is if they’re having a bad day or they’ve got something going on, maybe we help out.”
According to Breastcancer.org, breast cancer death rates are higher for women in the United States than almost any other type of cancer. Lung cancer is the exception. The good news is that those death rates are falling. As of 2008 there are approximately 2.5 million breast cancer survivors in the U.S.
October is officially Breast Cancer Awareness Month and women like Charlotte are sending a loud message of hope, strength and survival. You only have to walk “around the corner” to see Charlotte’s faith and love at work in
the community.
“Maybe I’m giving back to someone if they see that I’ve been through cancer and I can go on,” she says. “For women to see that ‘if she can do it – I can do it, and you can do it …’ Just don’t give up.”
Around the Corner is open Tuesday through Sunday, 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. The restaurant is located at 11 S. Broadway in downtown Edmond. Call 341-5414 for more details.
