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History & Genealogy For the Active Researcher IF YOU LIKE, PLEASE NOMINATE US FOR TEXAS COUNTY OF THE MONTH NOMINATIONS GENEALOGY FRIENDS OF PLANO [TEXAS] LIBRARIES, INC.SUPPORTING GLADYS HARRINGTON LIBRARY, THE LARGEST GENEALOGY COLLECTION IN THE COUNTY
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Return to Plano Memories Index PagePlano MemoriesBy Brenda Kellow Vavra’s BakeryBohemians from Austria came to Plano before the 1920s and brought their skill for baking pastries. The long narrow space Joe Vavra and his wife bought in downtown Plano became their legacy, Vavra’s Bakery. The bakery operated from shortly before 1920 until the 1960s or early 1970s when they moved to a new place on the southeast corner of Buckner in the Casa Linda shopping center in Dallas. Leaving Plano was a sad day because the bakery played a major part in the lives of local residents. Certainly the bakery brings back sweet memories to the young child in me. It was the source for red lips made of sweetened wax and little wax Coca Cola bottles filled with a cola flavored liquid. Next stop after the bakery was the source for the Dentyne like little blocks of black gum often referred to as “Black Jack.” The war years and a short time afterward brought a time when the red dye in Dentyne was unavailable, yet black was in abundant supply. The bakery always handled special occasions requiring a chocolate cake with chocolate icing for our gatherings. Berry and fruit cobbler, lemon pies, coconut pies and banana pudding were my mother’s specialties, so these were always on hand at home. It was recently memorialized that Mr. and Mrs. Vavra befriended the fallen Plano night watchman and policeman Green Rye who was killed by bank robbers in the dark of the early morning hours of February 20, 1920. As the bank robbers exited the First National Bank of Plano, now the Schell building, they shot Mr. Rye who had a feeling of some kind that the bank would be robbed that night. The dying Mr. Rye was taken to the Vavra’s home located just behind the bank. (See Dallas Morning News article, January 14, 2003, written by Detective Luke Grant of Plano who opened the closed case of the fallen Green Rye.)
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