With Thanksgiving in mind, I offer to you Terry Kirby, shooting victim, maker of good times.
When I last saw him in 2004, Kirby was pushing himself through harsh workouts at the Shepherd Spinal Center and clinging to his dreams.
Two years earlier, he had been shot in the back as he lay on the floor during a robbery at the Sidelines Sports Grille in Sandy Springs. He was training to be the night manager and was left paralyzed below the waist. His boss, co-owner Barbara Kriewald, died of her wounds. She was seven months pregnant with her third child, a girl.
The gunman, a mysterious dreg with a Baltic accent, tied the two up and repeatedly shocked the pregnant woman with a stun gun before shooting them. Later, he returned to the office to politely inquire of Kirby, “Sir, are you still alive?”
As crimes go, this was about as bad as they get and it generated tons of attention — with the media, the public and police. But no one was ever caught and the horror and furor dissipated into the mists of Bad Stuff that Once Happened.
By 2004, Kirby was optimistic. His fiance had stood by him through this ordeal and they were to be married soon. He still dreamed he might one day walk. And he was doggedly sure he’d one day open a restaurant.
In fact, he and an old friend were trying to line up investors. “Upscale casual,” was the plan. No, it was more than a plan. It was a lifeline, something that pulled him out of bed each morning.
The restaurant business carried an allure; it had positive energy, he said at the time. “It’s your job to make people happy,” he said. “Your job is to make them have a great experience. You get to do this every day. You create the excitement.”
I wrote the story and then have written 950 since.
Recently, I got a letter from Lawson Thompson, a reader who goes out with his wife on date night each Wednesday. Often, they head to an East Cobb eatery called Red Sky, a popular tapas joint with a fun atmosphere and a place where expectant singles gather to find the like-minded.
Thompson noted that one of Red Sky’s owners is in a wheelchair and rolls from table to table chatting up guests. “His enthusiasm is contagious and his employees reflect that,” Thompson said.
That owner? I’m sure you can figure that it’s Kirby, a man who demonstrates that a bullet can take away the use of someone’s legs, but it can’t steal ambition or aspiration.
Kirby is now 41 and no longer married (“didn’t work out,” he said with a shrug), nor has he had much progress regaining the use of his legs. But in May 2008 he and Brian Kennington, a friend since middle school, opened a restaurant in a shopping center on Johnson Ferry Road. The landlord figured they’d last three months. They are closing in on eight years.
It has been a tough slog. Restaurants are notoriously fickle investments known to devour operators’ time and money. New restaurants often fall by the wayside anyway, but try opening one just in time for the Great Recession.
Was Kirby worried? Sure. He had a bunch of money invested — his and others’ — as well as the livelihoods of a couple dozen employees on the line. “My biggest fear was ‘What happens to the staff?’ “
But remember, this is a man who held his breath on the floor of a cramped office, with a pregnant woman dying next to him, as a killer pointed a weapon at him and asked him if he was dead. Everything else in the worries department measures on a different sort of sliding scale.
Michael Terry Kirby Jr. relishes his life. He has a girlfriend, has his health, makes a little money. Sure, he’d like the case to be solved one day. But he doesn’t call the cops wondering what they are doing. He doesn’t ponder what-ifs and whys. It’s hard to be bitter, angry or resentful if you never look back.
He recounted overhearing a woman chewing out a clerk at Nordstrom recently. The woman was unhappy about not getting help taking her clothes to the fitting rooms. He rolled his eyes thinking about the episode. Some people have to invent problems.
He learned early on after the shooting that the present and the future are where he must invest his energy.
Jumping back into the game was never in doubt. He had to do something, and restaurants are what he does.
“If you don’t have something productive to do with yourself, then what life is there?” he said. “Without these things you could fall apart or waste away without a purpose.”
He got into the business 15 years ago to get away from the monotony of an office job. He wanted to be his own boss someday. Now he is.
East Cobb seemed like a good place to set up, he and Kennington figured. They knew there was plenty of money in the area but say there was a dearth of good night-time options. They figured a tapas/entertainment place would fill a niche. They considered calling it Bariloche, the name of a Argentinian town, but that seemed a bit too Intowney. Kennington, the behind-the-scenes kitchen guy, came up with Red Sky. Kirby, the front-of-the-house man, thought it fit perfectly.
As Kirby said back in 2004, his job is to “create the excitement.”
Friday and Saturday nights have dueling pianos. Normally, the restaurant is packed those nights. Wednesday and Thursday have guitar players for those on date night. The tapas theme conjures up community and conviviality.
“You come in with a group of people, order plates, most of them are shared, until you are full,” said Kirby. “It’s more than a dining experience. It’s a shared experience. You enjoy the food and the people you’re with. Dining like that builds relationships.”
Kirby is usually there, visiting with customers, hoping some of that shared happiness comes his way.
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