Fran O'Brien's Story Hits The MediaI blogged about this yesterday afternoon. The
WaPo does a good job of covering the story.
For the past 2 1/2 years, O'Brien and business partner Hal Koster have made their thick steak dinners and a night of bottomless drinks one of the rites of passage for the soldiers who are steeling themselves for their postwar lives in wheelchairs or with prosthetic limbs.
They come to the subterranean restaurant, at the corner of 16th and L streets NW in the basement of the Capital Hilton, in volunteer's vans and trucks. They're carefully wheeled down the stairs or slowly negotiate the steps on crutches. It has become a tradition so beloved among veterans that Garry Trudeau featured the dinners in his Doonesbury comic strip.The Italians come out of the story looking pretty good:
O'Brien's intends to hold two more Friday night dinners. In the meantime, the Italian Embassy has called O'Brien, offering its digs for the dinners until he comes up with another plan.
