Nobody feels like a stranger to Gina Stigall no matter where she goes.
The Oxford resident of 60 years has an innate ability to talk to anyone and make them feel like they’ve known each other for much longer than the exchange. Some of that might come from her background.
She has been a waitress for around 35 years. She got her start at 45 East Bar and Grill, formerly at 45 E. High St, until it closed down in 2017. She was there for around 17 years.
She also served at First Run, which is now Brick Street Bar, while working there as well. She has now been serving at Steinkellers, 15 E. High St, for about the last 10 years.
Nobody feels like a stranger to Gina Stigall no matter where she goes.
The Oxford resident of 60 years has an innate ability to talk to anyone and make them feel like they’ve known each other for much longer than the exchange. Some of that might come from her background.
She has been a waitress for around 35 years. She got her start at 45 East Bar and Grill, formerly at 45 E. High St, until it closed down in 2017. She was there for around 17 years.
She also served at First Run, which is now Brick Street Bar, while working there as well. She has now been serving at Steinkellers, 15 E. High St, for about the last 10 years.
“When 45 East closed, I had received a call and they had been interested in me for a while before that,” said Stigall.
Now when patrons walk downstairs to the German-themed restaurant, they can most likely hear Stigalls laugh or see her leaning over one of her regular tables and catching up. She doesn’t quite take your order like a typical waitress, however.
She rarely takes it at all. She memorizes it and instead talks with you for a brief while and makes you feel welcome.
She talked about how she wants her guests to feel. “I want it to feel like church,” said Stigall. “I want you to feel better going out the door than when you came in.”
She initially embraced the change of working in a German restaurant and “learning a lot of different things in regards to the German culture,” said Stigall.
Now, it’s about embracing the people. She considers her people skills a gift in the sense that she can reach out to people, and people can see her for what she is. “I’m not a phony person,” said Stigall.
“I’m a people person,” she proudly exclaimed when talking about what keeps her serving. “A lot of these kids that I have worked with through the years, I still keep in contact with them. Even after they graduate and had families, I get to meet their children.”
One of the people she currently works with, Maggie Eibler, talked about how great it is to work with Stigall.
She had lost her grandfather over the summer, and on her first shift back, she got to talk with Stigall about things.
“We always sit in the back on Sunday mornings, and we always talk life,” said Eibler. “My first shift back, not even 15 minutes in, she asked me how he was.”
“She’s got this like magic to her,” said Eibler, a soon-to-be graduate of Miami. Another thing Stigall and Eibler share is that she will make sure that Eibler has her rainbow of pens back and in order on her apron.
“She’s my home away from home. I call her my mom sometimes,” said Eibler.
Stigall also echoes Eibler’s sense of family. “I look at a lot of these kids as my own kids,” said Stigall. “It’s just like a kind of blended family”.
It’s not all about serving, however, for Stigall. She understands the Oxford community.
“I’ve lived in Oxford my whole life,” said Stigall. “I come from four generations in this town”.
Her mother went to Talawanda, her brother and she went there and she sent her daughter through the Talawanda system.
She has noticed some changes in Oxford over the years. She felt like there was more to do in Oxford than families and beyond drinking and partying, which the town has shifted to more.
“When I was growing up, [in] the uptown part of Oxford, we had two movie theaters, an arcade, there was a record store, a bookstore, a pet store,” said Stigall. “There was so many things to do”.
But not everything has changed. Most of her family still lives in town. She considers herself one that is always looking after others. She talked about looking after her 83-year-old mother. Stigall said she wants to make sure they are doing all right.
“[My mother] always used to tell me it doesn’t cost a dime to be kind,” said Stigall. “If the good Lord allows me to be 83, I want to be like my mom.”
She also said how being a people person came naturally for her mom, too.
She shared what it was like being a single mother as well. She said how she had to miss certain events because of work, but there were also events that she couldn’t miss.
“You might not always be able to eat the filet and lobsters, but I guarantee nobody ever went hungry,” said Stigall.
She served as a Girl Scout leader and cookie mom for her daughter, Jeannie. She said that her daughter was involved in the marching band at school, and so she was on band boards and working in the concession stand during events.
She stressed the importance of education to her daughter. She made sure that Jeannie was looked after, and she eventually went to Ball State, where she majored in broadcast news journalism and minored in theater and history.
Stigall has wondered about what life might be like in the future. “I kind of would like to see something else, you know,” she said. She talked about maybe going down to the South in the future. She did emphasize that there is nothing wrong with Oxford but she said there are other places to see.
Another part that keeps her tied to Oxford besides her family and her work family is her sports family.
She is a Cincinnati Bengals fan, but she admitted to having some fandom for the Cleveland Browns, too. It was more due to her overall love of football. A love that also made her bleed Michigan blue despite being an Ohioan.
She mentioned how fun it can be for her during “The Game” to cheer for the Wolverines when all of the Buckeye fans pack the bar while she’s working.
Another passion of hers growing up was softball and volleyball. She used to play softball in College Corner, Indiana, with her friends for a while before they kind of dissipated from the area.
Her real sporting passion however, is bowling.
“I’ve been a member of them lanes for 45 years,” said Stigall. She talked about how her parents, uncles, aunts and cousins would all go bowling together. Now she plays with a variety of people.
“It’s literally a second family … We have seen marriages, divorce, children born, graduated, just a little bit of everything.”
She mainly plays with her 77-year-old aunt and they have been traveling to tournaments together. She was just in Canton, Ohio, for a state bowling competition, and she said that they had around 50 members from the Oxford area there for the competition.
“These ladies I bowl with, they’re truly my sisters,” said Stigall. Some of them even have tattoos together, she said.
Stigall didn’t perform up to how she wanted there, but said she was proud of her daughter for how she bowled.
The group also shared some time outside of the lanes. The group she’s with loves to play poker. Stigall said it was the first time she had been to a mall in years.
“It’s just spending time with people that you love and everybody gets so into work and school or whatever … and sometimes you have to take time for yourself too,” said Stigall.
She also shared that there was a woman she bowled with who lived to 102 years old and she was a part of two separate leagues, and she would drive herself to play until she was about 100 years old.
“People think that just because you get to a certain age, all you’re supposed to do is sit in a chair and watch life go by,” said Stigall.
They’re either hoping to go to nationals in Milwaukee, Wisconsin this year, or they’ll for sure go next year when it’s in Reno, Nevada, according to Stigall.
Gina Stigall is ingrained in the fabric of Oxford, and she has found lots of ‘families’ throughout the town. If you ever run into her, stop for a chat, give her a piece of your time. She always wants to help.
