Brenda Robinson Freeman can still remember her first face-to-face encounter with a celebrity.
She was 16, working as a server in 1979 at her family’s restaurant on 17th Street in Columbus, which was called Robinson’s Fish Sandwich.
Two men walked in the front door. While she didn’t recognize one of them, she could tell by the white of the second man’s hair, mustache and goatee that the other dapper gentleman was possibly the most recognizable icon in fast food history.
“When he walked in the door, I asked him if he was Colonel (Harland) Sanders” said the then teen, she said. “And he said ‘yes, I am’.”
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The man accompanying the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken (now KFC) chain explained that he and Sanders have been going to fish stands to sample different recipes. In 1979, it had been 15 years since Sanders gad sold his shares of the fast-food chain.
While Sanders still served as a company spokesman and ambassador, Sanders was then focused on a restaurant named after his second wife: Claudia Sanders Dinner House in Shelbyville, Kentucky.
While Freeman said she did not have any lengthy conversation with Sanders, she said she was impressed at how kind and courteous he was. Before he left, he turned his chair over and wrote his signature and the date on the bottom of the seat.
“I’ve always wanted that chair, and I kept asking Mama (Lois Vice) why we left that chair behind,” Freeman said. “I’ve always thought that I’d never get that chair back.”
On Friday, Freeman and Vice were invited by the current owners of Ye Olde Fish House at 2024 17th St. At that time, Marlin and Denise Brown presented the chair to a very appreciative Freeman.
“I’ve come in here many, many times and asked about the chair,” Freeman said.
“Well, we wanted you to have it,” Marlin Brown said.
Connections to Columbus
While it’s little more than a footnote in most biographies, Harland Sanders was a Columbus resident while in his late 20s and early 30s. In this post World War I era, he was known in business circles as H.D. Sanders.
For a short time in the late 1910s, the Henryville native would occasionally travel to Bartholomew County to sell memberships in the Columbus Chamber of Commerce. Founded in 1908 as the Commercial Club, the organization changed its name to the Columbus Chamber of Commerce in 1915.
After obtaining the position of secretary for the Jeffersonville Chamber of Commerce, a news article in a December 1920 edition of the Evening Republican, forerunner to The Republic, stated that Sanders came to town to be considered as secretary of the Columbus chamber.
Within a month, he got the job. The 1921 Columbus city directory lists Harland and Josephine Sanders’ address as 1105 Washington St. In that era, the position of secretary at a chamber of commerce was essentially the same as director. It was also during this time that H.D. and his brother, Clarence Sanders, founded the Harlan Manufacturing Co. of Columbus, which manufactured gas-type farm lighting.
But with electric lights becoming increasingly popular, the investment soured. A notice in the Jan 12, 1922 edition stated the manufacturing company became insolvent and had been placed into receivership.
In 1922, Sanders and family had moved to 1304 Pearl St. But that was the last mention made of Sanders in Columbus in subsequent city directories or local newspaper stories for decades.
In his biography “The Colonel”, Kentucky newspaper columnist John Ed Pearce wrote that the chamber position didn’t work out because Columbus “provided few opportunities for business entrepreneurs.”
The city only had a population of 8,990 at the time, perhaps leading to that conclusion.
Sanders gained a reputation for moving to several different communities and working a wide range of jobs such as farmhand, streetcar conductor, ferry operator, life insurance representative and tire salesman. He even served as a midwife delivering babies.
However he did earn a law degree and practiced in justice-of-the-peace courts in Arkansas until a courtroom brawl with a client derailed his legal career.
While he left Columbus in the early 1920s, Sanders made occasional visits back to town in later decades to check in on his nephew, Colonel Jim Sanders, who operated two local KFC-style restaurants on National Road and Washington St. Both were operated by “Famous Recipe,” a company founded by Harland Sanders’ relatives after he sold the Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise. Jim Sanders died in 1989 — nine years after his famous uncle passed away.
An even older building
The former residence that houses Ye Old Fish House has its own history. Built in 1886 (four years before Harland Sanders was born), it was first opened to the public in the 1930s as a cafeteria-style eatery focusing on feeding the Arvin Industries factory workers across the street. However, there was a period of time after World War II that the building served as Columbus Day Nursery, which took care of pre-school children at the start of the Baby Boom. An addition was added to the west side of the building in the mid 1960s. Marlin Brown said.
In 1970, the business briefly became the 17th St. Restaurant, owned by Charles and Denio Johnson, and featured plate lunches and breakfast. A few years later, new owners took over who changed the name to Robinson’s Fish Sandwich, co-managed by Lois Vice Robinson. For a brief time, the restaurant was owned by Donald Hudson, but due to financial problems, the restaurant went back into the hands of the Robinson family.
Following a divorce, Lois took back her maiden name of Vice and renamed the eatery Lois’ Fish Stand. Eight years later, she sold it to Debbie Bodie and Connie Taylor.
In 1994, Dennis and Kristi Rose purchased the business and immediately renamed it “Ye Olde Fish House” — a name that was retained after current owners and popular gospel singers Marlin and Denise Brown took over the restaurant.
For many years, the eatery depended on traffic from the Arvin Industries plant across the street. When the company became Arvin-Meritor in 2004, there were 550 employees. But after the plant was acquired by three investors in Cleveland Ohio, the plant became known as Columbus Components Group. Slowly, the workforce at CCG was reduced until it finally closed in late July 2009.
But Ye Olde Fish House still enjoys popularity with employees at the county’s second-largest employer, Columbus Regional Health, Marlin Brown said. A fair amount of his business comes from those associated with the county’s fourth largest employer: the Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp., he added.
But perhaps their largest customer base are long time patrons who are loyal to the restaurant after decades of service.
“Even in this pandemic, they are keeping us alive and keeping us going,” he said.
