HARRISBURG, Mo. — Dwayne Southerland doesn’t mince words when he’s sitting at Kathy Kite’s breakfast table.
A retired electrical lineman, Southerland has lived in this small farming community, just north of Columbia, Mo., all his life. Most days, he has breakfast at Kite’s home — a little white house on East Sexton Street, the main drag through this town of about 300 folks.
That breakfast, which Kite provides for free to all comers, is in jeopardy because the Boone County Health Department is threatening to shut it down.
On Tuesday, as Southerland sat at the table with Brent Voorheis and Bill Zimmerman, I asked him what he thought of the government telling Kite she would need to install a commercial kitchen and obtain a permit if she wanted to make breakfast in her home for friends.
“I don’t think it’s any of their damn business,” Southerland said.
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The dispute has this tiny village up in arms. It started a few months ago, when Kite decided to start making breakfast for friends and whoever else wanted to come by. She used to be a cook at H-Town, the local gas station and convenience store. She made breakfast, and Southerland and his pals were often at a table during the early morning hours, talking about the weather, politics, sports or fishing.
There’s a table like this in nearly every small town in America, where farmers, retired folks and town locals gather every morning and tell tall tales. During the COVID-19 pandemic, though, H-Town closed its kitchen. There was no place in town to get a hot breakfast.
“There was such a demand,” Kite says. So she stepped in. One Saturday, she made biscuits and gravy and posted a note on her Facebook page. Then she kept the practice going, and now cooks breakfast nearly every day for a few folks who stop by.
Often, she makes breakfast burritos because they’re easy to wrap if people want them to go. This past Tuesday was the first day of school, and shortly before 8 a.m., a high school student walked in to grab breakfast.
Kite doesn’t charge anything, though she has an empty sour cream tub sitting on her kitchen counter if folks want to leave a tip. Kite isn’t wealthy — she lives on disability — but it’s just breakfast, she says, and she missed having “my guys” around.
“God laid it on my heart long ago to help people,” she says.
Kite, 55, has two grown children and five grandchildren. She grew up on a farm west of Harrisburg. Her parents grew up during the Great Depression, so they knew a thing or two about folks helping neighbors.
In July, Kite received a letter from the county health department telling her she was illegally operating a “food establishment.” She was afraid she would go to jail, so she shut down for a few days. Then she contacted attorney Dave Roland with the Goldwater Institute, an Arizona-based nonprofit that promotes individual liberty, often through litigation.
Roland, who lives in Missouri, has a long history of filing lawsuits to protect the constitutional rights and freedoms of Missouri residents. (Full disclosure: Roland represents the Post-Dispatch in an ongoing Sunshine Law lawsuit against the city of St. Louis).
“It’s incredibly common for people to prepare food at home and share it with others. That’s all Kathy’s doing,” Roland told me. “She doesn’t expect any payment. She’s never asked anybody to pay.”
Last week, Roland sent the health department a letter, suggesting their threats against Kite likely violated both the state and U.S. constitutions. He asked for the department to contact him to discuss the matter. He hasn’t heard from them.
“This is a lot bigger than Kathy Kite,” Voorheis says.
A cattle farmer and auctioneer, Voorheis is a regular at Kite’s breakfast table. Her 115-year-old house is special to him; it used to belong to his great-grandmother. He points out that if the health department shuts down Kite, then what comes next — tailgates, potlucks, fish fries, block parties?
Voorheis attends Harrisburg Christian Church, located across the street from Kite’s house. He told the pastor on Sunday that the health department’s letter could well be a threat to church dinners, another place for fellowship in Harrisburg.
The battle could be headed to court. In 2019, Roland sued on behalf of a pastor in St. Louis who was cited for serving bologna sandwiches to homeless people. The city dropped its effort to prosecute him after Roland got involved.
And in 2011, Roland represented a group of Girl Scouts in Hazelwood whose stand outside their home was shut down by the local health department. Roland used to keep a map in his office that showed every city in America where a health department had tried to shut down a kids’ lemonade stand. He helped mobilize a national effort to protect child entrepreneurs from government intrusion. Missouri passed such a law last year.
Kite’s situation is an even more egregious violation than his previous cases, Roland says.
“Constitutional rights are most protective when it comes to what people are doing in their own homes,” he told me.
For now, Kite carries on. For Zimmerman, that’s a good thing. He’s often the first to show up at her door, at about 5 a.m. He’s diabetic.
“This is great for me,” he says. “I get a good protein meal to start the day. This is what’s wrong with the world these days. Nobody wants to help anybody anymore.”
Kite does, and she doesn’t plan to cease and desist.
“I’m not going to stop providing for my community,” she says. “I am just a grandma cooking a meal for my family and my friends.”
