Although it may be hard for some of us to believe, The Green Leafe Café has not been here forever. Some of us cannot imagine a world without it; others just assume that the Leafe has just . . . always been there. But as hard as it may be to conceive, there was a time when there was no Green Leafe Café. Those must have been dark times indeed.

Like most things that take on mythical proportions the origins of the Leafe are shrouded in a bit of mystery. Every once in a while a bartender will strike up a conversation with a guest who reveals that they once tended bar or washed dishes in the back and they’ll spin us yarns about the Leafe ‘back when’ and give us little pieces of the puzzle.

As far as we can tell, The Leafe came into existence sometime in 1974. Apparently geared toward locals and tourists, The Leafe opened only for dinner and closed in the early evening and stayed on those hours for many years before attracting a little of the William & Mary crowd that wandered away from the college owned bars and fraternity parties. The Leafe’s comforts were too good to be kept on such a restricted schedule. The nights got later.

The Leafe became a fixture in the Williamsburg landscape, a refuge for weary students; an outpost for W & M professors; and a relaxing escape for tourists who wandered away from the colonial areas.

As some of you who are reading this can attest, the Leafe is a great place to work. In 19__ a young wrestler/transfer student from the University of Tennessee, named Glenn Gormley, was hired without ceremony, by then-bartender and future English Professor David Essex, to be a dishwasher. Throughout his undergrad years and his MBA candidacy, Glenn gradually worked every position at the Leafe and was eventually running it for the owners Mike and______ Kerr. Rather than cash-in with his MBA and his uncanny ability with numbers, Glenn decided that Scotland Street would be a lot more fun to work on than Wall Street. Glenn made an offer to the Kerrs and on ________________ of 19____ , Glenn found himself the new proprietor of The Green Leafe Cafe.

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