Stories
Family stories
The people behind the names and dates. Photos and memories are always welcome.
Hartman's Steak House, Durham
Donald's grandparents Charles Edward Hartman 1899–1975, "Pop", and Gertrude Joyce Gaither 1895–1983, "Ma" to the family and "Mom" Hartman to Durham, founded one of Durham, North Carolina's best-remembered restaurants.
Pop Hartman, born in Nyack, New York, built Hartman's Grill & Tavern on East Geer Street in northeast Durham. Pop's obituary says he ran it from 1939, and Mom's says they founded it about 1940. "Hartman's Grill" turns up in Durham papers by 1946, and 1940s classified ads even used it as a landmark for giving directions. It grew into Hartman's Steak House, the place Durham families went for special dinners, celebrations and dates. People still remember the steaks, the fried banana peppers, the seats by the fireplace and the famous blue cheese dressing. Over the years the building gained wings on both sides and an awning along the front on East Geer Street.
When Mom Hartman died on 20 June 1983, aged 87, the Durham Herald-Sun ran her obituary under the headline "Mrs. Hartman, Steak House Co-Founder". It noted she was a native of Davie County who had lived in Durham most of her life.
Pop ran the restaurant until he died at Watts Hospital on 14 April 1975, aged 75 (his obituary says 76), after a week's illness. His death made the front page of The Durham Sun: "Steak House Operator 36 Years Passes". The steak house closed that day, not to reopen until the following Monday. All of its employees were named honorary pallbearers, and among the grandsons who carried him was Donald Eugene Norman 1947–2026.
After Pop's death the family kept it going, and it closed in 2001, about sixty years after it opened. Later attempts to open new restaurants in the building didn't last.
The famous blue cheese dressing
The dressing outlived the restaurant. In September 2026 the Hartman's Steak House page on Facebook was still promoting jars of "Hartman's Famous Blue Cheese: A Taste of Old Durham NC", with tastings at King's Red & White Market and Angus Meat Market. So you can still buy it.
shared recipe For anyone who wants to make it at home, this is a version that's widely shared online. It hasn't been confirmed as the restaurant's own recipe.
- ¾ cup sour cream
- 1⅓ cups mayonnaise
- 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
- ½ tsp dry mustard
- ½ tsp garlic powder
- ½ tsp salt
- ½ tsp ground black pepper
- 4 oz blue cheese crumbles
In a large bowl, whisk the sour cream, mayonnaise and Worcestershire together until smooth. Season with the mustard, garlic powder, salt and pepper, then fold in the blue cheese. Cover and chill for a full day so the flavours come together.
Sources: "Steak House Operator 36 Years Passes", The Durham Sun, 14 April 1975, p. 1; "Mrs. Hartman, Steak House Co-Founder", The Herald-Sun (Durham), 21 June 1983, p. 25 (both found on Newspapers.com); Open Durham, "Hartman's Steak House" (with readers' memories); Preservation Durham. The family tree records the Hartmans living in Durham by 1935, and Pop's death in Durham on 14 April 1975.
Building bombers, then learning to fly them
Before he joined the Army in 1943, Donald's father Robert Charles Norman 1923–2016 worked at Ford's Willow Run Bomber Plant, which made B-24 Liberators. Family memory says he then trained as a pilot. Read his story.
A Coast Guard rescue, 1967
In October 1967, Donald Eugene Norman 1947–2026 was a young Coast Guard seaman at Harbor Beach, Michigan. When a sailor on a passing lake steamer was stricken with chest pains, Donald's boat crew "answered the call". Read the story.
An innkeeper in the family: the Holman Clavel
Donald's 5th great-grandfather William Oaten 1719–1795 lived at Pitminster, in the Blackdown Hills south of Taunton, Somerset. family write-up An Oaten family history shared on Ancestry says William married Hannah Newberry in 1743, and that from 1776 to 1790 he was innkeeper of the "Cog Wheel Inn", later renamed the Holman Clavel. It says the inn still stands, and with its low roof, whitewashed stone walls and black window frames it has changed little since William and Hannah's day.
The Holman Clavel Inn is still open at Culmhead, near Pitminster. It's said to be the only pub in England with the name: a clavel is the beam across a fireplace, and this one was hewn from holm oak. If the write-up is right, a family pub is still pouring drinks, 250 years on. If you're ever in Somerset, you can find the Holman Clavel on Facebook.
How the line comes down to Donald: William Oaten → his son Thomas Oaten 1747–1795, baptised at Pitminster in 1747 → Joseph Oaten 1787–1869 → Harriet Oaten 1823–1893, who married George Norman → John Benjamin Norman 1858–1891 → James Norman.
Sources: Oaten family write-up on Ancestry (not yet checked against records: licensing or alehouse records would confirm William as innkeeper); CAMRA, "Holman Clavel Inn, Culmhead". The Oaten line itself comes from the family tree.
The firefighting Normans of Plymouth Township
Donald's uncle Louis James Norman 1915–2006, the older brother of Robert Charles Norman, spent years with the Plymouth Township Fire Department in Michigan. He was promoted to captain in 1955, and in July 1962 he became the township's acting fire chief. He stepped down in December 1963 under the front-page headline "Trustee Can't Be Department Head: Norman Resigns as Fire Chief". Louis was also an elected township trustee, and the two jobs couldn't be combined. A 1972 profile summed up his public life as "first as a fireman, later a fire chief, and for 14 years as a trustee". The same article reported that his farm on Ann Arbor Trail had been named a Michigan Centennial Farm.
His brother Bob, Robert Charles Norman, was a volunteer fireman in the same department. In March 1966 a passing train set off a grass fire of 100 to 150 acres along the C&O tracks. The Plymouth Mail reported that "a volunteer fireman, Bob Norman", standing on North Territorial Road, "saw the fires start just after the train passed". According to his obituary, Bob went on to be fire chief at the Wayne County Child Development Center, retiring in 1976.
He was also a keen fisherman. His obituary says his record muskie was shown on Morton Neff's TV show in the late 1950s.
family story The family also remembers a fire station burning down. It hasn't turned up in the papers yet, so if you know the year or the place, please get in touch.
Sources: Plymouth Mail 25 Aug 1955 p. 6, 17 Dec 1963 p. 1, 23 Mar 1966 p. 1; Observer 19 Jul 1972 p. 3A; Robert Charles Norman's obituary (Kalkaska Funeral Home, 2016, on Find a Grave). The Plymouth Mail is free to search at the Plymouth District Library archive. The quotes are from its scanned text.
Generations of Normans
A summer afternoon in 1968: James Norman 1891–1974, then 77, holds his first great-grandson, with his son Robert Charles Norman 1923–2016 beside him. James had come to Michigan from Birmingham, England, nearly sixty years earlier. He and Robert Charles were the generations that put down the Norman family's American roots.
The one person missing is the baby's father, Donald Eugene Norman 1947–2026, who isn't in the picture. Maybe he's the one who took it.
From Birmingham to Detroit
James Norman 1891–1974 lost his father as a baby, crossed from Canada into Detroit in 1911, and became an American citizen. Read the Norman story.
Family legends
Every family has a few. Here are two of ours, with what the records say.
James Norman and the Titanic
family legend The story goes that James Norman 1891–1974 sneaked aboard the Titanic, was put off, caught the next ship, and that ship turned out to be the one that rescued the Titanic's survivors.
What the records show: James crossed the Atlantic four years earlier. He landed at Quebec on 8 May 1908 aboard the Empress of Britain, and by 1911 he was living in Michigan. The Titanic sailed in April 1912. The rescue ship, the Carpathia, had left New York on 11 April 1912, bound for Fiume in the Mediterranean, so she wasn't carrying passengers from England.
Where the story might come from: on 26 April 1912, eleven days after the Titanic went down, James's own ship, the Empress of Britain, also hit an iceberg. She was only slightly damaged. "The ship I came over on hit an iceberg too" could easily have grown into the Titanic version over the years. That's a guess, not a proven link.
The castle brick
family legend Another story says James brought a block of stone or brick with him from England, taken from "our castle". No castle turns up anywhere in the family's records. The Normans we can trace turn up in ordinary parish and town records, from the Morebath parish register of 1700 to the streets of Birmingham. And "Norman" was a common surname, not a sign of Norman nobility. If the brick still exists, though, we'd love a photo.
Share a story
Do you remember eating at Hartman's? Have a photo of the restaurant, a menu, or a story about Pop and Ma? Please get in touch.