Living in Service

By C y ntHi a a da ms • P HotogR a PHs By a my FR eem an

Her sea-blue eyes crink ling into a smile, Lisa Hawley opens the door of her new town home and tells me that only recently did she get around to painting the f ront door charcoal-gray. She concedes that settling into a newly built home in March of 2020 — the midst of a pandemic — “was a little unusual.” But so was having her much-loved Jamestown restaurant, Southern Roots, forced into a COV ID hiatus.

With clear, if sometimes tear y eyes, Lisa keeps perspective on what is merely inconvenient and what tr uly matters. T he finishing touches do not worr y the hard-work ing philanthropist.

Hunger, however, does.

Having watched children wrap por tions of their school lunch in nap k ins to take home is what drove her to establish a volunteer organization called Feeding Lisa’s K ids in 2015. (At that time, she points out, High Point ranked second in the nation for food insecurit y. Now it ranks seventh.)

“I’m k ind of loud and like to dance — all that stuf f. But when my children were in school, it led me to feel the pain f rom other children.”

T hose children were of ten hungr y. She had to feed them.

“I have way too much energ y for most people to be around me for long,” she jokes, padding through her serene home wearing a blue linen shir t she never irons. Her shor t blonde hair is unstudied and tousled.

For someone who is obsessed with tack ling hunger — whether in her restaurant, with charitable works or enter taining in her new home — it makes perfect sense for her to star t the tour in the k itchen.

Sunny, uncluttered and fastidious, the space contains a professional series Frigidaire and commercial Blue Star range.

“I didn’t put any upper cabinets in the k itchen,” she says with a smile. “It’s not normal. But I’m not normal.” An island, custom-built by Jamestown craf tsmen with repurposed barn wood, is one of her favorite features.

“You can see all the imperfections,” Lisa says, r unning her hand over the whitewashed wood. It is topped with clipped topiaries and a basket filled with neatly folded linen napk ins.

T he cook ing areas are dominated by ar t rather than lots of show y cook ing parapher na lia. A well-used gas g r ill is outside, ready to be fired up for company. Lisa maintains a str ictly organic and vegan diet. A s she tick s of f the list of things she avoids: gluten, chocolate, cof fee, sugar, she adds, “I cook ever y mea l.”

Outside in the drive is Lisa’s white van with a vanit y plate reading “L et’s Eat.”

Yes, she has a brand new, elegant home, but she knows where her tr ue values lie: “I am Southern Roots. I am Feeding Lisa’s K ids.” T hen, eyes welling — perhaps a mix of gratitude with str uggle — “I am not about this house.”

Now, Lisa has weathered the storms of change, pandemic-driven upheavals that temporarily shuttered the restaurant industr y where she has worked for over 40 years.

“I’m this crazy, ADD girl who loves cook ing and loves to help others,” she explains. “I come f rom hard-work ing people.”

She adds how gratef ul she is for sanctuar y.

Lisa sinks into a generous white sofa in the sunroom. Sofas and chairs are slip -covered in white, inviting deep rela xation and calm. “I just like how peacef ul it feels,” she says.

Serenit y reigns.

“That piece of coral over there? It just makes me happy to look at it.”

T he home’s overriding design scheme is pared-down, elegant simplicit y, which looks easy, but requires studied master y.

A f ragrant elixir of seagrass, orange, clove and eucalyptus inf uses the rooms. Lisa discovered that aromatherapy helps when the world beyond jangles the ner ves.

Here, Lisa and husband, Faison, a former fabrics salesman, battened down. “Faison helps at the restaurant,” she adds.

T heir town home, light and calm, provides an inland harbor. Set in a new communit y tucked outside High Point’s metro area, it is far away enough to be accessible, yet removed f rom the f ray.

She is mak ing depar tures f rom the past. Friends say their former bungalow brimmed with antiques and color. She says it was layered with 32 years of meaning, rearing a family and giving bir th to a restaurant and charit y. T his new home is different — she repeats again.

She has shed her old sk in, feels less attached here.

T he v isua l changes are radica lly simple in the Hawley’s new residence, which by ever y measure, is a spare beaut y. T he builder cre ated archways, opening spaces and dev iating f rom the standard plan. “We took dow n the wa lls; it’s not like any of the other ones.” Some of the ar t displayed is Lisa’s ow n watercolors — she paints things found in nat ure, like oyster shells, and pushes herself, painting over canvases, to get it r ight.

Sea grass r ugs, baskets, whitewashed f urniture, conch shells, plants, nubby textures and light wooden floors — ever y where she has curated the most peacef ul colors of nature, layering tone upon tone.

She isn’t finished. But as she pads around, suddenly stops. “It’s a mess,” Lisa insists. T here are stacks of books, some piled in chairs

and atop f urniture, which she is rearranging. W hereas their Triangle Park home was traditional and steeped in memor y, here the mood is deliberately ar tsy and open.

For three years before the move, she cleared the attic and prepared. “I got rid of a lot.”

A purge was purposef ul, a reinvention. W hat she wanted, first and foremost, was to ready a downstairs space for her mother. At nearly 900 -square-feet larger than their 1928 Triangle Park house, the new home can accommodate her mom, whom she hopes will move in, and also provide room for their “newest” son, Ty, 20, whenever he visits f rom his job in Reidsville. “His family str uggled with homelessness,” she explains. “He always has a place with us.” T he Hawley family have known and loved Ty since he was 8.

In 2020, the family lost their three ag ing dogs, which only added angst and sor row to a deeply tr y ing year. Daughter Oliv ia, 32, came home f rom Charleston, S.C. (where she work s in the film industr y) dur ing the lockdow n for severa l months. “She saved me,” says Lisa. “She kept me busy.” T heir oldest son, Sam, is 27 and work s in sa les in Wilming ton.

Yet last year also meant recalibrating Southern Roots, the Jamestown restaurant she first opened in 2000 in High Point’s J H Adams Inn. It closed for three months during the pandemic.

Work beyond these walls, especially Feeding Lisa’s K ids, “is painf ul,” admits Lisa. T he pandemic exacerbated food insecurities and created new homelessness. More than 190 area families receive boxes of donated food each week. T his all r ushes out of her.

People, not things, matter — which Lisa feels needs punctuating.

And this: “I love to feed people.”

Lisa satisfied the most exacting of hard-work ing mentors while catering. She got to work with Mar tha Stewar t at Market Square when Stewar t was food editor for House Beautiful.

T here were other mentors, too, especially Grace and A. B. Henley (former owners of the Adams Inn), who encouraged her when she feared her restaurant would fail.

So many helping hands, she mar vels.

L ast March, the Rotar y Club of High Point presented a check in the amount of $10,424 to Feeding Lisa’s K ids. T he pandemic stretched the limits of those with the fewest resources.

A number of Rotar y clubs, civic and communit y groups help raise money for FLK. One hundred percent of money donated to them goes directly towards the purchase of food.

Lisa received an award for her ef for ts f rom the Cit y of High Point this spring.

“It’s dif ficult,” she says, as tears reappear.

“I see so much that is painf ul. T hat is hard to look at. I just know God has given me a hear t, to look at it.”

Lisa nonetheless str uggles with the fact that she has had luck y breaks while many do not.

Yet she was one who has always worked, always made her luck. Both of her parents thought nothing of work ing second, even third jobs, and she washed dishes at a rest home as a teen f rom 5 in the morning until midaf ternoon on the weekends and before school. “I liked it,” she insists. Since then, Lisa has logged countless hours inside k itchens, long before she became a restaurant owner.

She has catered, opened Southern Roots market on Main Street, and a restaurant by the same name. Lisa had a formula. Work. T hen work harder.

“I showed up. And I never gave up. I would show up at 6 in the morning and I’d still be there at 10 o’clock at night. T here were so many times in the last 20 years of owning Southern Roots that I thought I’d go out of business. But I kept showing up.” So did her chef, J.C., who remains with her 19 years later. “I found my tribe,” she says about Southern Roots. “I love the people who work for me.”

She no longer worries about the restaurant, which is thriving with a staf f so rock-solid she can take a sabbatical by the sea. A group of volunteers is committed to Feeding Lisa’s K ids.

“I love to help others,” she says. “But I know for sure that God put me on this Ear th to do one thing, and that is to feed people, whether they can pay for it or not.” OH

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