Wichita ? Some museum exhibits educate, some inspire, some warn.

This one just wants to know, “What’ll ya have?”

	www.americandinermuseum.org

The traveling exhibit, a joint project of the Kansas State Historical Society and the Providence, R.I.-based American Diner Museum, is still in the planning stages. When it’s complete, officials say, it will help to tell the story of Kansas’ place in American dining history.

For nearly three decades, thousands of other all-metal diners were mass-produced by Valentine Manufacturing in Wichita.

“We care about diners manufactured everywhere,” said Gregg Anderson, a spokesman for the American Diner Museum. “But several museums and historical societies have acquired these Valentine diners, and we want to make the exhibit available to them for use as a fund-raising tool to restore diners.”

Finding out just how many Valentine Diners remain in use, and where, is part of the Historical Society’s plan.

“We think a lot of these diners ended up in small farm towns where the locals met to eat,” said Blair Tarr, the society’s curator of decorative arts. “By now, people may not realize they even have a Valentine diner.”

Valentine diners are one of the most asked-about pieces of Kansas architecture, Tarr said. There is a replica of a Valentine diner in the society’s museum in Topeka.

Another of the American Diner Museum’s main goals, Anderson said, is recognizing the diner’s role as a social center.

Like a family reunion

“This is a piece of the working man’s history,” Anderson said. “They are community gathering places. What happens at them today is the same thing that happened when they were first built. You go to these diners to get the news of the day and have a great meal.”

Danny Dean, the most recent owner of Brint’s Diner in Wichita, agreed: “The diner is like a family reunion every day.”

Dean has owned the 70-seat diner with his wife, Tania, for the past three years but it has been a fixture at the corner of Lincoln and Oliver since 1960.

Former employees sought

The museum and historical society are looking for former Valentine employees to provide information for the exhibit.

From 1938 to 1971, more than 2,000 Valentine diner units were manufactured and sold to buyers in every state but Washington.

The company’s founder was Arthur Valentine, a Wichita restaurant owner and promoter. He operated a hamburger stand until he came up with the idea to start manufacturing six-stool diners.

In 1938, he opened his plant and employed six people.

The most popular model of diner was the Little Chef, a 10-stool restaurant that retailed for $3,300. Potential buyers simply had to find a spot of land to put it on, build a foundation and hook up utilities.

When Valentine died in 1953, the company went through a series of owners before it was purchased in 1959 by Byron and Robert Radcliff.

By the 1960s, the old six- to 10-seat diners had been expanded to seat about 40 people.