WINDHAM – When it comes to the traits honored on Mother’s Day, Sandy Donnelly of Windham – the former owner of Red Sands Restaurant and now a hostess at Rustler’s Steak House – is as close to the ideal as someone can get.

Not only is the 80-year-old mother of three incredibly doting on her own flesh and blood, which also includes many grandchildren and great-grandchildren, she also has spent more than four decades in Windham treating her restaurant patrons like family.

“It’s amazing. She’s definitely the mother of Windham, there’s no question,” said longtime Red Sands customer Bill Diamond, who remembers when Sandy and her husband, Red, bought the restaurant from previous owner Arthur Kilgore in 1971. “Everybody looks to her with all the respect that the term mother has. That’s Sandy Donnelly. She exemplifies all of that. She’s kind, gentle, supportive – everything you’d want a mother to be,” said Diamond.

Diamond, who served in the state legislature and worked in local schools for 20 years, said when he dined out in Windham, he would likely go to Red Sands.

“I always went there because they were always so involved in the community, helping the high school kids,” Diamond said. “They touched a lot of lives, both she and Red. And most would go in just to see her, because it was like you were coming home and that was the feeling that she presented to everybody.”

Tom Noonan, who worked in the real estate office next door to Red Sands starting in 1987, remembers fond times with Donnelly and especially the oatmeal bread that she made fresh every morning.

“I ate there at least twice a week for lunch, especially Fridays for the steak sandwich, which was made on homemade bread,” Noonan said. “And if you caught a big fish, you’d take it out to the kitchen and show each other. She and Red and the waitresses, it was like family.”

After Red, who died in 2006, and Sandy sold the restaurant in 1993 to their son, Bob, Donnelly served until 2000 as a hostess and waitress at Red Sands. After Bob Donnelly sold Red Sands in 2000, she got a call from former Charlie Beiggs owners Irene Discatio and Peggy Rowe, who invited her to work as hostess.

“And I said, ‘I’ll be right there,’” Donnelly said. “And the next owners of Charlie Beiggs asked me to stay on and Tracy and Dana Mains at Rustler as well. I love working here because it’s like family.”

And after 40 years in the North Windham restaurant scene, Donnelly is the one constant, seeing restaurants come and go. Her Rustler’s manager, Haley Osborne, said she’s “Miss Windham, because she knows everyone.” Her love of the customers, Donnelly said, is what keeps her around.

“I love it, I work six days a week,” she said. “I love being around people, and it’s a friendly atmosphere, and just a great place to work.”

In the family

Donnelly grew up in the restaurant business since her parents owned a luncheonette in Trenton, N.J., and she said she was fortunate to marry a man who shared her love of cooking. When Red and Sandy moved from Pennsylvania to Windham in 1971 to open Red Sands, they lived next door to the restaurant and worked morning, noon and night. They raised three children – Debbie, Bob and David – who also worked in every aspect of the family business: busing and washing dishes, serving, baking and cooking.

Looking back, David Donnelly, who was born in 1972, said his mother was and still is an important part of Windham.

“I think it’s great. I think there should be more people like her, just because she’s a good person,” he said. “She always does good, she never does bad. She never talks bad. She’s just a good person all the way through.”

David, an HVAC contractor in the area, remembers countless spaghetti dinners his mother and father would hold for various community groups such as Scouts and Project Graduation. Donnelly was an officer in the Windham Athletic Boosters Club, Boy Scout Troop 805, as well as the Windham Chamber of Commerce, being chosen Businessperson of the Year in 1984.

“If anyone needed to raise money, she’d do anything she could to raise money through the restaurant and not charge for the facilities or the services. She was iconic,” David said.

While Red Sands was the go-to dining choice for Windham residents, that notoriety came with a downside for the three kids, since patrons knew who to report any mischief to.

“I used to eat breakfast with my principal (Mike Timmons) and half the businesspeople in the town who would come in early before we opened to eat. So it wasn’t easy being a kid because everyone knew what you were doing. And if anybody knew what you were doing they told your mother,” David joked. “So basically I got caught at everything.”

His older sister, now Debbie Schkrioba of Windham, has similar fond memories of growing up in the restaurant business. She was 10 when her parents bought the restaurant, formerly known as Kilgore’s. She said her mother worked nearly all day 5 a.m.-10 or 11 p.m. with a quick nap near noontime, six days a week. While Donnelly still works six days a week at Rustler’s, her hours are about 10 a.m.-3 p.m., filling her spare time with family activities such as attending sporting events.

“She’s the Energizer bunny,” Schkrioba said. “She’s just going all the time. She volunteers, she works, she does this, she does that. She’s just everywhere.”

She said her mother still cooks for family outings and “doesn’t miss a birthday” by baking special pies, with recipes used at Red Sands.

“Like for my son, it’s a lemon meringue. For my daughter, it’s a strawberry ice cream pie. No cake, just pies. She still makes the mud pie and tapioca pudding for Rustler’s, so not only is she the hostess, she does some of their desserts,” Schkrioba said.

When the Schkrioba family dines out, they normally go to Rustler’s to be seated by Donnelly.

“She’s at home. She’s doing what she loves to do,” Schkrioba said. “Many people have said, ‘Deb, you should tell your mom to retire,’ and I feel like that would be asking her to die. Because she needs to work. She loves it, and she knows everyone in town.”

The family atmosphere was prevalent at Red Sands, and that came naturally from the matriarch, Schkrioba said.

“If you came into the restaurant and became a regular, you were not a customer anymore, you were family. My mom would figure out what you liked and she’d have it ready for you,” Schkrioba said.

Adding to the family atmosphere at Red Sands was a special rectangular table located near the entrance to the kitchen.

“If you were lucky enough you got to sit at the family table,” Schkrioba said.

“Family-table” regulars included prominent local businessmen who would come in the back door at 6 a.m. while Sandy baked bread. Sandy would make them breakfast while they discussed town news.

Bob Donnelly, who was 6 when Red Sands opened, eventually took over the family business in 1993 after graduating from culinary school. Donnelly said his mother cultivated a true family-restaurant feel with her motherly ways.

“We had so many regulars, it was the family restaurant,” he said. “Everyone was known and you felt like you were a part of the restaurant. It wasn’t just going to any restaurant, you were going to a place where everyone knew you. And the customers knew each other.

“She wasn’t going to be the life of the party, or the head of the party, she just wanted everybody to be there, she wanted everybody to be a part of it.”

Donnelly cultivated a fun atmosphere, her son said, not only by befriending customers but also treating the waitresses as family, many of whom worked there through high school, college and beyond.

Barb Maurais, of Windham, was one of the first Red Sands waitresses and worked for 25 years off and on. Maurais also worked for Bob Donnelly.

“It was fun. Sandy and Red were fabulous, fabulous bosses. You felt like you were family,” Maurais said. “She was like the fun aunt that when you went to visit you just laughed all the time. And when I went to work, that’s what we did. We were silly. We absolutely paid attention, and she made sure we served our customers, but the feeling was, these were guests in her home and that we were making sure they were comfortable and well taken care of. That was always, always her focus. Same with Bobby, too.”

Next generation

Having trained countless waitresses and cooks at Red Sands and Charlie Beiggs, Donnelly is still training at Rustler’s. About three months ago, a new employee with the last name of Donnelly was hired and reported to her for training.

“I just started working at Rustler’s as a host and she was the one to train me, which was almost a scary experience, to be honest,” said Ian Donnelly, Sandy’s grandson and a student at Windham High School. “I’d hate to call her ‘nit-picky,’ but she strives for perfection in absolutely everything, right down to the arrangement of the salt, pepper and dessert menu on each table.”

Ian, who is Bob Donnelly’s son, said his grandmother’s passion for taking care of the customer is evident in how she approaches her job.

“She has a willingness and love to work that is incomparable to anyone else I’ve ever seen. She finds solace in working and getting the chance to form so many strong relationships with people,” Ian said.

Ian’s father said his son is getting a similar education as he did, learning from the Donnelly family’s matriarch.

“I think it’s great for him to get the feel of what it’s like in the restaurant industry and to have my mom, his grandmother, to show him what she does as a hostess right down to the particulars of how to set a table and place things correctly on the table. It’s pretty funny to have him tell the story to me because it’s something she did to me 40 years ago,” Bob Donnelly said.

When Charlie Beiggs was in business, Sandy Donnelly taught several other grandchildren – Terry, Matt and Lauryn Schkrioba – the restaurant business, as well. Matt is now a sous chef at the Portland Marriot, so she feels like she’s passing on the family tradition.

Because of all the memories, Donnelly rarely ventures into the old Red Sands, which is now Thatcher’s Restaurant, owned by her friend, Dave Garry. But when she does get the urge to return, she often must leave because, “I get so choked up I take food with me lots of times. It bothers me, I love the owners, it’s just me, maybe I wish I was still there,” she said.

While her family is glad to see her not working as much as she used to, Donnelly says the next best thing to owning her own restaurant is hosting at one. She said she’s not the kind to sit at home, and enjoys seeing all the customers she’s gotten to know through the years.

“A lot of the people who ate at Red Sands eat here, which is wonderful,” she said. “The food’s good. The waitresses are good.

“It’s really like a second family. It is, it really is.”

Sandy Donnelly, pictured behind the grill at the former Red Sands Restaurant, worked from early in the morning to late at night six days a week. Courtesy photo

Red Sands, as it appeared in August 1971 when Red and Sandy Donnelly purchased it from Arthur Kilgore, was located at the intersection of Whites Bridge Road and Route 302 in North Windham. Courtesy photo

Sandy Donnelly, right, stands with her Rustler’s Steak House co-workers, from left, server Jennifer Lauzier, bar manager Julie Kesson, server Shannon Linehan and manager Hayley Osborne. Donnelly, a hostess at Rustler’s, has been working at Windham restaurants for more than 40 years.
Staff photo by John Balentine

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