CENTERBURG — Just before 10:30 a.m. on Tuesday, an old man wearing a plaid shirt, tucked tightly into his pressed khaki pants, walked into Centerburg’s only bakery.
He walked with a hunched gait, moving gingerly with his eyes down. But when he heard his name called, he snapped to attention.
“Hey, Jerry!” the woman behind the counter beamed, and a wry smile brightened his eyes as he greeted her back.
At 85, Jerry Mabry has a select few things that he does every day. Stopping by Kristi’s Bakery, a cozy shop located at 18 W. Main Street, is one of them.
“Every morning she’s open,” Mabry says with a chuckle. “I’ve gotta have my biscuits and gravy.”
Behind the counter, store owner Kristi Layton explained that Jerry wanted his usual — a biscuit with gravy, a muffin and a cup of black coffee.
While the two talked for 30 minutes about nearly everything, from upcoming events at the senior services building to children and grandchildren, they didn’t talk about the elephant in the room.
Layton will be closing up Kristi’s Bakery at the end of June as she moves on to the next chapter of her life.
As Layton took a phone call in the back of the bakery, Mabry was asked if he’d miss her.
“Oh yes, definitely,” he said. “I don’t think there’s anyone now who knows the community like Kristi does.”
Moving on
There are several reasons Layton decided to close her bakery. First and foremost, she wants to find work with health insurance and regular hours. Beyond that, though, she’s “just kind of tired.”
Layton, 52, typically works 12-hour days at the bakery, rising at 1 a.m. and opening the shop at 5. After it closes at noon, she will typically run errands or cater for weddings. The shop is open five days per week, Tuesday through Saturday.
This workload got harder after a bout with cancer, as she took off seven weeks following her December 2016 surgery but then proceeded to work while undergoing chemotherapy treatments, only lessening her workload by one day per week (she used to work on Mondays as well).
“Ever since I had it, I’m just really tired. And I just thought, you know what, now’s the time to make a change and do something else,” Layton said. “I would never want to jeopardize what I’ve started here and not be able to keep up. So I just thought, before that came to the point where you weren’t as friendly or you weren’t as happy, I didn’t want that to happen. I thought now was the best time.”
Layton expects to sell the space to a buyer who will operate their own bakery, which will open on July 5.
This month marks the end of a 16-year stint that Layton called ‘a dream,’ one that she’s had from an early age.
Growing up in Sunbury, she started taking cake decorating lessons at the age of 11. She had her pastries entered in the Ohio State Fair by the time she was a teenager, and she distinctly remembers former state governor Jim Rhodes buying what she’d made.
“I’d always dreamed about opening up a bakery when I was young,” Layton said.
After college, she worked as a service tech, going around to different Big Bear supermarket stores and training cake decorators. When she had her daughter, she decided that she wanted to travel less (and also saw that Big Bear was going under), so she looked into opening her own bakery.
When her family found the space in Centerburg, which was then “just a storage place,” Layton decided to make it hers. They spent the next year cleaning it out in the evenings after work, with the help of her newfound neighbors, and Layton was amazed at the support of the community.
The village’s lone bakery was an immediate success.
“It was scary at first because you don’t get a paycheck and you have to worry about, ‘Are people going to come in?’ But the community was really good,” Layton said. “I mean, we needed it here. There wasn’t anything.”
Community impact
As Layton talked to customers over the counter, Mabry unwrapped his cranberry orange muffin and began to shovel it down.
“I’m not supposed to eat this sugary stuff, but I can’t resist,” he said smiling.
Even though a new bakery will fill Layton’s space after she hangs up her apron, customers like Mabry know it won’t be the same.
Layton has been a staple in the Centerburg community for the last 22 years, when her family moved there from Sunbury after her daughter was born.
She has served on the Centerburg Schools Board of Education, as well as the Senior Services board. She created the Track Club at the high school, pulling other parents in to spearhead an effort to fund the installment of a high school track. After two years of fundraising efforts, the levee for the track passed last spring and will be installed this summer.
She assists with the Oldtime Farming Festival and volunteers to manage the concession stands at the high school’s home volleyball and basketball games, finding time during her 12-hour work days to give back to the community.
“I think it’s important — I think everybody should give back to their community,” Layton said. “Whether it’s helping with little things, or maybe you’re in the service or something. But I think it’s our job, to give back, in order for everything to keep going.”
In a way, Layton feels that giving back is necessary. After all, this is the same community that helped her paint her shop 16 years ago, that has been making her place a daily destination since the beginning.
“It was the community that supported it,” Layton said. “And it’s nice that you can go some place, especially if you didn’t go to school here, and for people to all come and support you and to start coming on a regular basis … it means a lot.”
Layton says that she is compelled to remain in Centerburg, given all that she is involved in within the community, but that it might be challenging due to market constraints.
While Layton might not miss the 1 a.m. wake up calls, she will probably miss just about everything else. She opened the bakery when her daughter was in first grade at Centerburg and has watched the village’s youth grow up in her shop; one day, a mother is taking her child to the bakery for a bagel before pre-k, and seemingly the next day they’re ordering a graduation cake.
“I will really miss seeing the kids,” Layton said. “I’ve seen little kids as babies go all the way up to high school. I’ve even had kids that have graduated and gone to college, and then they come back. So it’s really nice being a part of everybody’s family — it kind of feels like you are.”
Even though she still has a month left at the bakery, reality is slowly starting to set in for Layton.
As Mabry slowly stands up, throws his trash away and walks to the door, he looks at Layton and nods.
“See ya later, alligator,” he says with a warm grin.
She’ll miss that, too.
