In mid-December Mike and Mark Tate, proprietors of Middleburg's landmark Coach Stop Restaurant, announced that January 3, 2010, would be the restaurant's last day of business.

At press time, no purchase has been agreed upon for the 7-day-a-week, three-meals-a-day franchise that occupies one of the most prominent store fronts in Middleburg's central business district, employs more than 20 people, and has, for more than two decades, served as the social and political heart of Main Street.

The decision to close was not easy. "We have enjoyed serving the community a great deal. It has been 22 years since we bought the Coach Stop and over 30 since we first started working in the Coach Stop," Mike noted. "The Restaurant business brings great joys and rewards but also long hours and hard work. It is especially hard on our families, and that's probably the most important reason for our decision." Mark added, "For 22 years we have looked forward to seeing and serving all of our friends in the community and we will miss all of our friends. In the end we had to decide whether we could last another decade or if it was better take on another challenge in our lives. We have explored selling the Coach Stop, and while that would be more profitable it would be a little bitter sweet watching somebody else run the restaurant that became so much of our lives."

A Middleburg Landmark

The "regulars" at The Coach Stop range in age from 80-plus to under 8, and everywhere in between. Visitors from all over the world sit side-by-side with townspeople, their friends and neighbors.

Moms and dads leave their kids at the bar eating ice cream while they shop or run errands in the village. Secretaries of State and CIA station chiefs, sports heroes and farm workers, rub elbows or sit in neighboring booths and tables, read the papers, drink their coffee, chat with each other, or not, pay their bills, and go on their way without furor or fanfare.

At the Coach Stop if one listened, one always learned. Who is running for office, who isn't, and why? What UVA football player flattened Sam Huff in his senior year at West Virginia? What Americans were rounded up in Berlin after the Reichstag fire? The current price of hay and horses? Who's dating whom? Who won at the horse show or steeplechase race? Who lost? The difference between a Titleist and an SUV.

A Family Business

For many the Coach Stop is as much home as home is, and sometimes more. The food was good, and the service was, well . . . .right.

Mike and Mark, and the people who work with them, have what some of their customers described as "just good people sense." They hired people they liked; they knew when and how to leave people alone; and when and how to be sure to take special care of them.

Malcolm Gladwell might say they were more than good at what they did because they both put in their 10,000 hours.

Others, including Mike and Mark, chalk it up to good parenting. Their parents, Mike and Margo Tate, moved the family to the Middleburg area from Alexandria in the mid '70s. They raised four great kids. Their eldest son, named for his dad, is not only a successful restaurateur, he holds an engineering degree from Virginia Tech. Mark has served as Vice Mayor of Middleburg, and among other things, as a leader of the state and county Republican Party. Chris Tate is a successful lawyer. Julie Tate, is a Pulitzer Prize winning research specialist and journalist at the Washington Post.

Mike began work at The Coach Stop, thirty-two years ago, when Brian and Loretta Jillson owned and ran the shop. As Mike tells the story, Loretta, over lunch one day, asked if all the Tates had summer jobs. Mike' grandmother, he swears, said, "Yes . . everyone but Mike."

The Jillsons offered him a job on the spot. He was 15, and a rising junior at Loudoun County High. A year later Mark signed on as well. Nine years after that, the Tates bought the Coach Stop from the Jillsons and never looked back.

There was no job in the restaurant the Tates hadn't done themselves during summers and weekends through high school and college. They have never asked anyone to do anything they hadn't done themselves, Mike says . . . and wouldn't know how to do it any other way.

People loved them for it, and Middleburg will be a lesser place without them.