White's Cafe

The picture below comes from an edition of The Houston Post, published in January, 1952. It contained several articles and ads highlighting the new shopping center in Sugar Land. One of them was this ad for White's Cafe. It shows the original location, which was roughly where the west end of the shopping center sat. Many will remember the new location across Ulrich Street from The Palms Theater.

Charlie and Mildred White ran the cafe for a while. Herbert Haas bought it and ran it for quite a while. Marshall Durr and others may have owned and operated it, but eventually the McGinneses ran it in the mid-1960s.

The original White's Cafe was also referred to as the 'root beer' stand. They had car hops who'd bring food and drinks to patrons who stayed in their cars. I know T. C. and Marjorie Rozelle met there. It was a teen hangout for a long time. My mother has told me Charlie White hired Dale Tatum, a resident of the Humble Camp south of town, as a short-order cook when Dale was just 14-years old. My brother has interviewed Marie Muehr Dunkerly and learned that she worked there.