How "sweet" to find this topic! And it was started on Oct 24th, the day after we celebrated my father, Milton Graugnard's, 85th birthday! I'm sharing your kind words with him today. I know it will warm his heart.
I am Debra, his youngest daughter, and I too greatly miss the bakery. I have such fond memories of "growing up" there! I have 4 sisters and 1 brother, and we all worked there when we were younger, as did some of our cousins.
My sister and I had wanted to take on the bakery after my father and his brothers retired about 20 years ago, but it was important to my father that we graduate from college and build careers for ourselves. The neighborhood was getting a bit dangerous at that time too. My father and his brothers had been robbed at knife- and gun-point a few times. I think he worried about our safety. And, yes, he worried that my sister and I might kill each other if we tried to work together day after day.
It was hard to let it go. Milton, Ronald and Henry III were the third generation of bakers in their family to run the bakery. Their great-grandfather, Henry, Sr., had started the bakery in Galveston after coming to America from France around 1886. At the time the 3 brothers retired, the business was over 100 years old and still quite successful.
Initially they sold it as a bakery, but the new owners didn't last very long, so they took it back and ran it as a scaled down operation from the original.
It's now used for a few purposes - a daycare, a bird-house manufacturing business, and a second floor apartment behind that great curved glass tile wall.
Twenty years later I still dream about re-opening the business, if not there, somewhere. I've traveled around quite a bit, and when I happen upon a bakery, I have to take a look inside. It's hard to find the variety, abundance and quality of goodies that they used to have. They made everything from scratch on-site, fresh each day. That rarely happens any more. (My father says that the main suppliers of ingredients don't even provide the basics of flour, sugar and such in bulk any more. Now everything comes as a mix.)
One more thing I have to mention - the brownies! Did you guys miss the brownies? We had people who came regularly from near and far to get the brownies! Oh, and the wedding cakes... I could go on...
Thanks for making my day!
