Women’s History Month - Helen Gwaltney Lenox

During March 2021, Women’s History Month the Surry County VA Historical Society will be featuring some of our local women who have contributed in so many wonderful ways to making Surry County a great place to live! This week, we are featuring women who were capable and successful businesswomen!

Women’s Month - Helen Gwaltney Lenox

Helen Gwaltney Lenox was a creative and successful business leader in Surry County, and she made the Surrey House Restaurant a well-known eating place all around the state!  As written by Bo Bohannan in  the Surry Historical Society newsletter in 2006, “Helen made the Surrey House an eatery that was known statewide as a place for good home cooking. It was written up in many of the large state newspapers as well as in Southern Living.”  It is been very difficult to find many records on Mrs. Lenox, but here are few things we know about her, The Surrey House, and the staff who made the restaurant successful!   

One bit of oral history indicated that Helen was a hostess at the Chickahominy House in Williamsburg before coming to the Surrey House, and perhaps it was there she picked up some training and good ideas! The Surrey House was opened in 1954 by Owen Gwaltney. When Helen married Owen, (date not found), she began managing the business and continued until she sold it to Mike Stevens in 1993. By retirement time, Mr. Gwaltney had passed away, and she had married Victor Lenox, an old high school beau.  He died in 2002 after they had retired and sold the Surrey House.  Stevens noted in an article in the Virginian Pilot in1996, that many employees had been with the Surrey House for a long time, ``Long-term employees are not the norm in the restaurant business,'' Stevens says. ``Here, it's different. Miss Elsie (Evans) has been in the kitchen since the place opened, and Miss Ann (Mavin) has been here more than 30 years. We have several more who have been here more than 10 years.'' Two more not mentioned included Skippy Wyche and Dorothy Osbourne. Those good cooks-more women to celebrate this month- were surely a big reason for the Surrey House’s reputation, too!

Restaurant staff and friends of Mrs. Gwaltney-Lenox shared memories about her. A close friend said that she was definitely the one who came up with so many good ideas, an instigator of sorts, in a good way! She had great ideas, then found the people who could help get them started and carried out! She had the idea that a women’s investment group would be a good thing, helping women learn more about financial investing. One friend was given the task to talk to brokers and find out who could help them learn about stocks! The group began and met regularly for many years. Others who worked for Mrs. Gwaltney-Lenox say that she expected the restaurant workers to work hard. Many have repeated her saying, especially if she found a person not working, “If you have time to lean, you have time to clean!” For a few years, she sponsored fashion shows, with clothes from her shop, now the home of Just for Kicks Cupcakes, etc. The models she used were mainly hairdressers she knew from Richmond, with some of the locals! During one show, she served chitlins, which were reported to have “stunk up the place!”  One of her biggest suggestions, perhaps, was one she had around 1975 or 1976! She was said to have “sparked the notion of promoting Surry’s three main products,” and suggested Col. Ritchie be in charge of it. He created a detailed festival plan that became the well-known Pork, Peanut, and Pine Festival, which just ended in 2018!

Not much is known about the passing of Helen Gwaltney-Lenox. After leaving Surry, she lived in Richmond, and a local minister, who visited her occasionally, learned just a few years ago that she had died a couple of weeks before his visit. The Surrey House, with its delicious food-apple fritters, peanut raisin pie, peanut soup- along with the old-fashioned garbed wait staff, the local morning coffee drinkers & many conversations at the front counter, and the long lines at the restaurant on Sundays after church, are memories that she left the people of Surry and beyond! Helen Gwaltney-Lenox definitely left her positive mark on our town and county!

Sources:
Virginian Pilot, September 29, 1996, Surrey House is a Tranquil Escape.
Surry County Historical Society Newsletter, 2006. 
Daily Press, January 6, 1996, Lt. Col. Ritchie, 75, Former School Board Member by Erika Reif
Oral history reports