LEWISTON, Maine — Jimmy and Linda Simones don't miss a beat as customers come and go from their restaurant in downtown Lewiston.
For more than 100 years, their family has built a space that is about so much more than the food. It's a place where photos with campaigning politicians line the walls and national publications featuring the restaurant are framed.
Nearly a year after a mass shooting left the Lewiston community shaken, it's also become a space for healing, conversation, tears, hugs, and sharing memories.
Simones' World Famous Hot Dogs sits next to the Lewiston Police Department and just down the street from city hall. It's no surprise the pulse of the community runs through the doors.
Jimmy and Linda often know their customers not only by name, but by their order and where they sit.
"Arthur Strout, his dad comes in regularly, and family members, and a brother of his comes in, but they used to be regular customers," Linda Simones recalled.
"They would sit at booth four out back," Jimmy chimed in. "He would have his chili cheese dog, and he liked his Moxie. And we look, and he's not here anymore."
Arthur Strout was one of the 18 people killed in the shootings last October.
"It's just so sad to see what people have gone through. We're just bystanders to their trauma, to their hurt, and what they're going through," Linda Simones said while sitting at a table surrounded by the bustling lunch crowd. "The ones that have lost family, it has to be like an open wound. How does that ever heal and how do they go on? These people must think of their loved ones. What could have been? What should have been?"
On the day NEWS CENTER Maine visited, we met Bill Ledoux. He stopped into Simones' for lunch with his son and grandson. Bill lives just miles from Schemengees Bar & Grille Restaurant and Just-In-Time Recreation, where the shootings took place. We asked what he remembers from that night.
"You know, we live only 3 miles away from where it happened," he said. "And it was kind of like, should we lock the doors? A few minutes later you hear it's Schemengees, and we know those people."
Bill knows the owners. And for so many people, reality started sinking in of how far-reaching the impact would be for Lewiston and the state.
Through the shock and heartbreak over the past year, Simones’ Hot Dogs has become a place for people to gather, share tears and memories, and really represent what it means to be Lewiston Strong.