The rooftop neon sign for Wilder’s Steakhouse in Joplin, Missouri, glowed again for the first time in at least 25 years during a relighting ceremony Saturday night.
Brad Nickson, president of the Oklahoma Route 66 Association, posted this short video of the relighting of the animated neon sign on Instagram:
And here’s Nickson and other members of an estimated crowd of 125 watching as the Wilder’s sign is relighted.
The ceremony was held in conjunction with the Route 66 Association of Missouri’s quarterly meeting at the restaurant earlier in the day.
According to a news release from Jim Thole of the association’s Neon Heritage Preservation Committee, festivities originally were planned in a parking lot across the street from Wilder’s, but 35-degree temperatures and brisk winds moved it inside.
The program included these speakers:
- Brad Belk, director emeritus for the Joplin Museum Complex and community historian for Missouri Southern State University, was the historian for the team that facilitated the project led by the Neon Heritage Preservation Committee.
- John Hipple, president and owner of Sign Designs in Joplin, restored the sign. “This sign has been one of the most special projects that we have ever done — really restoring a piece of Joplin history,” he said. He said one of his workers was a bus boy at Wilder’s 45 years ago, and he was the one who took it down and put it back up again.
- Patrick Tuttle, director of the Joplin Convention & Visitors Bureau, who spoke on behalf of the city. He proposed a toast to the restaurant’s owners, Mike and Marsha Pawlus: “The memories of Wilder’s have been kept alive by them,” he said. He also noted presidents of Route 66 associations in Missouri, Kansas & Oklahoma attended the event.
- Marsha Pawlus said: “We are so, so proud to bring this piece of history back.” She recalled how the sign was a Joplin landmark when she was a child: “You knew you had arrived in Joplin when you it.” She added: “I never dreamed then that I would ever have had any connection with it except looking at it.”
The restaurant at 1216 Main St., with the help of the Neon Heritage Preservation Committee, landed a $24,000 cost-share grant from the Route 66 Corridor Preservation Program to restore the Wilder’s sign. (Wilder’s other neon sign at its front entrance has been continuously maintained for years.)
This was the 12th sign in 10 years the committee has guided historic signs to restoration.
Wilder’s sits several blocks south of Route 66, but the rooftop sign was designed to catch the eyes of its travelers. The neon signs at Wilder’s date to the 1950s.
Verne Wilder opened a drugstore at that site in 1930 but switched to the restaurant business three years later. The Pawluses have owned the restaurant for more than 20 years.
UPDATE: The Joplin Globe filed this story about the event late Sunday.
(Images from Wilder’s sign ceremony courtesy of Jim Thole)
Nice! Fun! I hope the owners take care of it, and the weather doesn’t ruin it.